Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons On April 9th, anti-Israel protesters disrupted a talk by George Mason University School of Law Professor Eugene Kontorovich, an International Law expert who was invited to speak to the LDB chapter at the University of Chicago Law School about anti-BDS laws and the First Amendment. The disruptors, one of whom was a UChicago law student, were first asked to leave by the law school administration. When the non-students refused to leave and continued chanting and disrupting, the police had to be called to remove them from the room. During the talk, a group of about five protesters from Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) interrupted and began chanting, “Free, free Palestine, protesting is not a crime!” One student who attended the lecture said, “After about five minutes, we gathered around Professor Kontorovich, and he attempted to resume the talk. The protestors raised their voices.” Kontorovich attempted to engage with the protesters, but they refused. Charles Todd, Law School Dean of Students, requested that the protesters leave the room. When they did not leave, the police had to be called to escort the disruptors out of the room. In an email to the school community, Todd stated that the “disrupters were issued trespass warnings and asked to leave the premises.” Todd’s email explained why the protesters were removed by the police. He clarified that the University’s Student Manual explicitly states that there are limits to free expression on campus. These include “violations of the law, defamation of individuals, invasion of privacy or confidentiality, and disruption of ordinary University activities.” Todd went on to say that: This chanting did violate the University’s policies. It is the right of any speaker invited to our campus to be heard and for all who choose to be present to hear the speaker. Moreover, it is the right of members of the audience to ask tough questions of those speakers. The heckler’s veto is contrary to our principles. Protests that prevent a speaker from being heard limit the freedoms of other students to listen, engage, and learn. Todd also made an important distinction between protests conducted by university students versus protests conducted by those who are unaffiliated with the university, saying, “When non-students disrupt, our procedure is to ask the individuals to cease the disruption. When those engaging in disruptive conduct refuse to comply with this directive, the next step is to request the assistance of UCPD.” In response to the disruption, Kontorovich said, “This is not a terribly effective tactic of persuasion, loudly yelling so students can’t hear. It’s not going to convince you of the justice of anyone’s cause. What’s ironic is that these [protesters] are the ideological allies of the people who favor safe spaces, who say that speech that makes them uncomfortable is violence and hearing things they don’t like silences them. Yet they come and make it so people can’t hear things they don’t like.” This is certainly not the first time anti-Israel disruptors have tried to silence pro-Israel voices on college campuses. For example, last year, protesters disrupted a Students Supporting Israel (SSI) event at University of California Los Angeles, leading students to file formal criminal complaints with the UCLA police department, with the assistance of attorneys from LDB and StandWithUs. In 2017, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) disrupted an on-campus discussion sponsored by SSI at University of California at Irvine. As Kontorovich said, the ultimate goal of these event disruptions is to “create an atmosphere of toxicity around Israel-related issues so that speakers are just not interested in coming.”