Perhaps you should read up a little on Autism Spectrum Disorder. James Damore almost certainly tends to the autistic, and it can lead to both some insensitive statements not intended the way they were taken, and being unable to recognize some of the social situations he was put in.

If that were true then wouldn't James Damore have recanted or apologized at some point, once he realized it was offense? This isn't making an off-color remark in passing.

Bearing in mind he has no reason to apologize for "the memo as a whole", how should he approach this? He's already said many times he was not saying what people are claiming he has said. It hasn't worked. Should he release a version 2 of the memo with the benefit of maybe someone else to help him edit it? How would that be received by his critics or the press?

Is there really anything he can say or do that will redeem his public image after he's been slandered on a global stage based on a internal-only memo that someone leaked to the public likely with the intent of ruining his life?

There is a point at which there is really nothing you can say to make a situation better, and you are better off just not saying anything further on the matter.

I guess I don't get your point about him being on the spectrum and how that means he accidentally may say offensive things. If that were true, as you say, wouldn't he have realized that in something like this?

I would think so, but I don't speak for everyone on the spectrum. I can't imagine someone in 2017 thinking "hey, lemme write an anti-diversity memo at Google, that'll go over well".

From the impression I've gleaned, Googlers seem to strongly believe what is said in Google stays in Google and people there believe their coworkers are generally open-minded, extremely intelligent individuals. He may have believed he was in an environment where this was not as much of a mistake as it very obviously, in hindsight, was.

Autism is not an excuse. Damore has openly sympathized with white supremacist groups. The common practice of diagnosing and pathologizing white men that have been radicalized by white supremacy and seek to shape institutional policies around white supremacy, prevents us from fully engaging with the harm they cause.

Autism does not cause you to be a bigot.

https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/931599879238967296

I don't agree that Damore has "openly sympathized" with white supremacist groups. Unless you consider admitting "Grand Wizard" is a pretty cool title to be... "sympathizing". (It's a pretty cool title. Reprehensible humans have that title, but it's a cool title.) The fact that he didn't anticipate how badly this post would be received by the public though... a clear symptom of his presence on the spectrum.

As a fellow member of the spectrum, I can fully see where Damore fits on it. In some ways I agree with his actual points (not what the media has claimed they are), but his presentation was poor, and insensitive to how it would be received. And a good chunk of his memo was just... not good. He never intended it to be public, and it certainly wasn't fit to be (I believe he considered it a work in progress, and was looking for constructive feedback), but someone angry at him decided to make him a public figure overnight by leaking it and ruined his career.

He obviously made some very poor choices on who to associate with afterwards, not realizing the political implications that came with them. He failed to see how free publicity provided by certain parties would associate him with them.