[Willie Green]

Insane overreactions to trivial incidents like this are a large part of why racial epithets are used in the first place.

I don't think I'd call this a "trivial incident".
Meyer's attitude and comments were certainly inappropriate for someone who was in his administrative position with the university. There is no doubt that he deserved immediate dismissal with loss of all pay and benefits.
That said, I don't see where Williams is entitled to any financial compensation for this offense. I have to agree that, in this instance, the lawsuit only serves to aggravate racial tensions.

[CGTRWK]

It's just a word. The usual response to an insult is to turn the other cheek, or say something equally rude back, and then go on about your business and forget about it. That works for millions of other people every day, and it'd have worked there too.

I live too close to DC and get to experience this kind of friction almost every day. It's a fact of life in a heterogenous culture. If every offensive comment received a reaction like this one did, society could not function and everyone would starve. The only way to keep things running at all is to trivialize problems as they crop up. The alternative is to make a mountain out of a molehill as happened here, and sooner or later the mountain will get big enough to derail the country.