While it is within the role of a conference organizer to choose what talks they will accept, in this particular case they seem to have grossly overstepped the a

While it is within the role of a conference organizer to choose what talks they will accept, in this particular case they seem to have grossly overstepped the acceptable bounds themselves. And this does not seem to be an error of fact or some misunderstanding, the actions of the CoC committee (at least as described) seem intentionally malicious without an acceptable justification - since the talk was simply obviously not outright insulting, the whole case was without merit. What's sauce for goose is sauce for gander - perhaps the NumFOCUS individuals involved in that CoC committee should publicly stand by their decision, so that the community can evaluate whether we trust their judgement and are willing to allow those people to participate CoC enforcement in the future. Enforcing communal norms requires that the community trusts that the enforcers actually do share these communal norms, and there should be a clear mechanism to remove them if they don't. Participants and speakers deserve protection and a fair judgement, but the 'political' positions of writing down and enforcing the norms should be able and required to substantiate and publicly defend their position and judgements - at least if they claim to represent the community instead their own unilateral position.