New York Times: ‘Dishonest’ and ‘Afraid’ Google CEO Sundar Pichai Should Resign

A columnist for The New York Times has called upon Google CEO Sundar Pichai to resign following the controversial dismissal of former employee James Damore.

Damore was fired from his position at Google this week after publishing a viewpoint diversity manifesto, which examined reasons why there are fewer women in tech jobs and called for more ideological diversity in Google’s workplace.

In a memo, Google CEO Sundar Pichai claimed Damore had advanced “harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace,” despite the fact that numerous psychologists, male and female, deemed the manifesto to be scientifically accurate.

“There are many actors in the whole Google/diversity drama, but I’d say the one who’s behaved the worst is the C.E.O., Sundar Pichai… the supposed grown-up in the room,” wrote New York Times columnist David Brooks on Friday. “He could have wrestled with the tension between population-level research and individual experience. He could have stood up for the free flow of information. Instead he joined the mob. He fired Damore and wrote, ‘To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K.'”

“That is a blatantly dishonest characterization of the memo. Damore wrote nothing like that about his Google colleagues,” he continued. “Either Pichai is unprepared to understand the research (unlikely), is not capable of handling complex data flows (a bad trait in a C.E.O.) or was simply too afraid to stand up to a mob.”

“Regardless which weakness applies, this episode suggests he should seek a nonleadership position,” Brooks concluded. “We are at a moment when mobs on the left and the right ignore evidence and destroy scapegoats. That’s when we need good leaders most.”

Inc writer Suzanne Lucas has predicted that a lawsuit will be brought against Google, after claiming that the dismissal was, in her opinion, illegal in numerous different ways.

Over 50 percent of Google employees are reported to have disagreed with the firing of Damore.