you're right.

I was thinking it was an off campus protest in the streets (which there have been more of lately as columbia doing more to enforce the rules against unauthorized on campus protests), but this incident took place during a protest that was held in between the two libraries, so would be on campus.

I also probably shouldn't have finished the the "try again". It was distasteful, just aggravation getting to me, which i'll touch on at the end, but that's not an excuse for distasteful behavior.

However, FIRE is still arguably correct per their methodology to exclude this case. the article starts with

"We have been pummeling the public with numbers and data about shout downs, heckler’s vetoes, and disinvitations and deplatforming of campus speakers for years, and it can be exhausting to hear people continue to dismiss it as a non-issue."

They don't seem (at least directly) concerned with public protests and counter protests. If one accepts the concept of protests and counter protests, one accepts the concept of "heckler's veto" when it comes to said counter protest. So, while the skunk/stink bomb guy was trying to disrupt a protest, they might view disrupting a protest as outside their purview, as protests in general are outside their purview.

What they are concerned with is the disruption of non protests, such as invited speakers on campus not being able to speak due to people actively preventing them from speaking. i.e. a student group organizes a 'private' talk, gets a room through official university channels and the speaker is prevented from speaking due to people protesting the speaker through the "heckler veto".

I don't believe we have seen many (if any) such cases of "heckler vetoes" against pro-palestinian/anti-israel speakers who are speaking to private groups.

However, if one wanted to attack FIRE's methodology, one would be better off demonstrating disinvitations of speakers. I believe one could demonstrate that this has occurred (screening of arguably anti-semitic films being cancelled for instance, if one doesn't find them anti-semitic, one would find that to be a disinvitation / deplatforming).

With that said, I would argue that that there's a qualitative difference between speakers getting disinvited to campus and speakers being shouted down on campus. While the disinvitation isn't a nice feeling, its different than actual disruption.

I'd further argue that the condoning of disrupting private meetings (which causes people to feel unsafe) directly leads to stink bomb like attacks where others try to make the people that condone those forms of disruption feel unsafe. I think the stink bomber should be punished due to a violation of Columbia's stated policies and that people engaging in heckler's veto should also be punished for the same reason and that civility rules should be heavily enforced on campuses.

Further, one could argue that from a "free speech" pov, actively preventing a speaker from speaking via the heckler's veto is actual a higher level of speech infringement that people setting off noxious stink bombs that don't actually stop the protest. One can argue that the noxious stink bomb is worse from a physical perspective, but that's not about "free speech" directly (one has to argue that feeling unsafe is limiter on speech, which is a fair argument, but I'd still argue is fundamentally different than preventing someone who is trying to speak from speaking and in the process also making them feel unsafe).

Getting back to civility and why campus discussion aggravates me, when I was a student @ Columbia, pro-palestinian students would get in my face while I was simply walking through the gates to the school buildings simply because I was identifiably jewish (i.e. I didn't engage with them, and simply walked around those who would try to get in my way, I was simply targeted because i was obviously jewish). I should have made a proper complaint at the time, but it was easier to ignore as it was confined to what they called "Israel apartheid week", so I ignored it and moved on with my life. This behavior of targeting identifiable jews has been occurring at columbia for what can be viewed as decades now, (i.e. my incidents took place in the mid 2000s, so its at least that long, and I know people who graduated in the last few years who experienced similar things) and is indicative why many of us believe that anti-semitism can't be separated out of these protests.