> I'm nearly 50 and decided some years ago that life was just too short to bother accommodating people who are assholes. Perhaps he's brilliant, but there's qu

> I'm nearly 50 and decided some years ago that life was just too short to bother accommodating people who are assholes. Perhaps he's brilliant, but there's quite a lot of brilliant people around and if there's a discovery just waiting to be made it's more likely that someone else will do than that the opportunity to make it will be lost forever. Not just that but, how many (potentially smarter) people would refuse to work in that company/field/lab because of people like him? By listening to him, he's potentially doing more damage to the field than he could ever contribute, because that then makes it clear to everyone thinking about entering the field (or even in the field) that bigots like him are listened to. By shutting him down and removing his platform, it's clear that speech like that is not accepted there, thus making bigotry of that sort less prevalent in the field as a whole. The question boils down to "is this acceptable talk for the workplace, does this talk create a hostile workplace for anyone", and the answers to that are pretty clear cut.