Some 20 protesters disrupted a speech by an Israeli ambassador at Syracuse University in New York on Tuesday, raising concerns about efforts to chill free speech on campus.

Dani Dayan, Israel’s consul general in New York, began addressing around 100 audience members during an event exploring the future of the Middle East when a group of protesters situated outside the lecture hall started chanting loudly in an attempt “to drown out the talk,” Miriam Elman, an associate professor of political science at Syracuse, told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.

Elman, who attended and helped organize Dayan’s lecture, said the protesters — among whom were both students and professional activists — had assembled in advance underneath the windows of the event room, holding posters claiming “Zionism = Racism,” “Judaism Rejects Zionism,” and endorsing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel. “They were quiet,” she noted. “They talked to people who came by. Nothing wrong with that.”

But the chanting started as soon as the event commenced at noon — and escalated about three minutes into Dayan’s speech, when Ariel Gold, a campaign director for the far-left activist group Code Pink who sat among the audience members, stood and unfurled a banner reading, “Free Palestine.”

“Dani Dayan, you have blood on your hands,” Gold shouted at the ambassador, according to video footage. “Israeli settlements are entirely illegal under international law,” she continued.

Dayan is a former chairman of the Yesha Council, which advocates on behalf of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Gold was promptly removed by campus security, but her chants were echoed seconds later by Ursula Rozum, a member of the anti-war Syracuse Peace Council’s Justice for Palestine Committee.

“Free Palestine, end the bloodshed in Gaza,” shouted Rozum as she was escorted out. “Sanctions now, Dayan is an international criminal.”

While the room settled down shortly afterwards, the chanting outside the lecture hall intensified.

Read More: Algemeiner