"withering email" == "anger-fueled message sent by a manager to a large group that asks readers to ignore company policy and start arguments with other leaders"
I don't see where "ethical AI researcher" comes into play here. Instead, I see a leader at a company unprofessionally sending messages to a large listserv and is later fired.
What am I missing?
"Google silences minorities/women/AI researchers" is way more interesting/important than "Google/AI researcher did/didn't misbehave."
It isn't really clear with your first quote if one thinks that silencing people generally is okay, but not minorities/women, or if silencing anyone is never okay, or if the minority/woman was silenced merely for their demographic status.
She wasn't fired. She said she'd resign if they didn't meet her conditions, so the accepted her resignation. She's being disingenuous.
In general, if I hear "withering e-mail" without context, I imagine an e-mail sent between two parties (or at most, a handful) where one party is cutting down the other directly. When I hear that an employee was fired for a "withering e-mail", I immediately think of retaliation.
In this case, "e-mail" is almost inconsequential. This "e-mail" was a broadcast to hundreds of people who were not in any way involved with the subject matter. It was "withering" in the sense that it cut someone down, but the person/company it cut down wasn't even in the TO field.
Words matter. I now notice that the post title is changed to the much more neutral "AI researcher Timnit Gebru resigns from Google".