Others may have sympathized on learning that Hamid Dabashi, a professor of Middle East studies at Columbia University, felt threatened by a graduate student at his own university, but not me.

The incident began late on Sept. 27, 2004, when Victor Luria, a Ph.D. candidate in genetics and a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, wrote Dabashi an e-mail taking strong exception to what Dabashi had written about the IDF in an article, “For a Fistful of Dust: A Passage to Palestine,” he published in the Egyptian newspaper, Al-Ahram. In response, Luria wrote to Dabashi:

I have rarely seen such a revolting excerpt of anti-semitism as your article in Al-Ahram. Your article implies no right of Israel to exist. … As an Israeli citizen, I welcome the right of Palestinians to have an independent state and a capital in East Jerusalem. At the same time, you clearly deny (and you are not even a Palestinian) my right to have a country.

Rather than answer Luria’s critique, Dabashi early on Sept. 28 forwarded his note to several top Columbia officials, including the university’s provost, Alan Brinkley...