Answer

I don’t know what the content of the conference is (I only heard about the uproar, and that they revised the content somewhat).
If the question is scientific—what the phenomenon leads to, whether or not it creates problems, what it stems from, what its history is, and so on—then there is definitely room to discuss it at an academic conference anywhere. But if the discussion is about the legitimacy of the phenomenon, then that is problematic. Such a discussion is not scientific but value-based, and therefore does not belong in academia at all, not specifically at Bar-Ilan (though in the “social sciences” and humanities, anything is possible).