Investigating Professorial Anger

Joseph Massad has been proven to have replied "angrily and heatedly" to a student. He has been proven to have asked a rhetorical question in a testy manner during an off-campus talk. He is anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian. Does this in itself mean that he has acted unethically, or that he was not a rigorous scholar? The New York Times Editorial at the very least suggests that given his positions and his personality, he warrants further investigation.

It glosses over the question of the hate mail and death threats received by the professors themselves and by continuing to imply that they are indeed "guilty" of something, they will encourage the virulence of pro-Israeli extremists in and around the Columbia controversy to suppress dissent.