His PhD is in "Systems Biology", isn't it? Which is more about computational approaches to understanding biological systems than, at the risk of simplifying horribly, "messy" biology.

> making people feel bad at their job is inappropriate (even though the memo did no such thing)

Say you've got red hair and someone sent a memo around saying that they'd heard that everyone with red hair was more of a fuzzy people person than a real coder. Would you agree that people with red hair may well feel targeted?