Correction Appended

When protesters stormed a Columbia University stage on Wednesday evening, shutting down a speech by the head of a fiercely anti-immigration group, they not only stopped the program, but also hurtled the university back into the debate over free speech on campus.

The fracas, which came just weeks after the president of Iran was invited to speak at Columbia and then told not to come, was captured live by Columbia’s student-run television station, CTV, as well as by two commercial stations. It was shown repeatedly on television in New York yesterday and was widely available on the Internet.

Yesterday Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chastised Columbia for the disruption. “I think it’s an outrage that somebody that was invited to speak didn’t get a chance to speak,” he said in response to a question on his weekly radio program.

“Bollinger’s just got to get his hands around this,” Mr. Bloomberg added, referring to Columbia’s president, Lee C. Bollinger. “There are too many incidents at the same school where people get censored,” he said, using Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an example.