This is a ridiculous standard for an employer. He has at will employment, they can fire him and he can also leave if he dislikes their diversity programs. Regardless of his thesis, a private employer has no duty to support any/all speech from their employees to other employees during business hours and using their business resources (which all of this was). It is perfectly legitimate, 100% protected first amendment speech to tell your boss to go f-ck themselves at work, or to call a customer a piece of sh-t to their face, but don't expect your employer to support you for it.

It may have been illegal to fire him, see this article: https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google...

Google encourages "free" speech between employees on the same topics as long as it tracks with their moral narrative.

This is the largest point for me and what distinguishes them from "Know and repeat the company value statement." If they take an organizational position in promoting certain values past a certain degree, then they absolutely have a social responsibility to make space for those who would discuss counter-values.

At will employment has historically been a smokescreen for companies to fire people for all sorts of abusive / illegal / poorly intentioned reasons. The fact that they can fire people for saying anything doesn't mean they should.

Is this really the path we want to go down?

I love when people reference the fire in a theatre argument, because I learned from Christopher Hitchens that the reference is actually about prosecution of a group of Yiddish people protesting Wilson dragging us into WW1 (after getting elected on the promise not to), and Oliver Wendell Holmes used the bullshit example of yelling fire in a crowded theatre to support the conviction!

Also, Google has already shown it wants to be an arbiter of morals. For example, perhaps its lost in this topic, but on my conspiracy forums what people are upset about is Google apparently has been expanding censorship efforts and have hired certain groups to assist in deeming content innapropriate... Such "neutral" groups as the fucking ADL! So if you have a YouTube video calling Israels occupation of Palestine "apartheid" that's worthy of censorship. Don't even get me started about the Google execs shady relationship with the deep state and certain powerful politicians. Google turned evil a long time ago, and they are only getting worse.