American college students have been protesting Israel’s aid blockade and ongoing slaughter against Gazans. One hunger striker has been hospitalized. Five reports below.
(1/5) California State students protest aid blockade in Gaza with a hunger strike
Two dozen fasting students also press the university system to divest from weapon manufacturers in a list of demands
By Cy Neff, Reposted from The Guardian, May 12, 2025
About two dozen California State University students began a hunger strike last week to protest against starvation in Gaza due to Israel’s aid blockade, marking the latest act of political protest on college campuses.
The strikers – students from San Jose State, Sacramento State, San Francisco State, and CSU Long Beach – began their fast on 5 May
“We, the students of San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach, and San Jose State Universities, are beginning a united hunger strike in solidarity with the two million Palestinians at risk of starvation in Gaza,” Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in a press release. They are also pushing the university system to divest from weapons manufacturers, among other stated goals.
The hunger strikes come as Israel’s aid blockade in Gaza passes its second month, and is facing mounting international criticism for the millions of Palestinians pushed toward famine, as well as Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s, recent assertion that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.”
Max Flynt, a hunger striker and undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, cited the aid blockade as a decisive factor in organizing the strike. Flynt sets up daily on the campus quad with other organizers and strikers under a “Hunger Strike for Gaza” canopy. Organizers hold educational workshops, and strikers have their vitals taken every few hours, but do not stay overnight.
“Many of the forms of protests that were used last year, specifically the encampments, have become effectively illegal in the United States,” Flynt said. “If we were to put up a tent today, the police would be called on us almost immediately.”
Jaime Jackson, a professor at Sacramento State and member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine who studies non-violent protest, pointed out the hunger strike’s symbolic ties with the realities in Gaza.
“The bombing, the killing, the massive violations of human rights have been an ongoing issue throughout,” Jackson said. “But the recent, really big thing has been the blocking of humanitarian aid and the ongoing starvation of people in Gaza.”
The crackdown on college protesters from the police to the policy level began during the Biden administration last year and has only increased under Trump. International students with vocal support for Palestinians have been especially targeted.
“We know that the Trump administration is doing this because they’re scared of the student movement, they’re scared of what they saw last year, and they’re scared that it will come back again,” Flynt said.
The divestment demands from Flynt and other protesters include the California State University system’s adoption of San Francisco State University’s Human Rights IPS Screening, the severance of study abroad programs with Israeli universities, and divestment from companies producing military, weapons and surveillance technology.
“We’re aware of where they are sending our money, and we don’t want to be used to any of these war efforts, genocide through these companies,” said Amal Dawud, an undergraduate and organizer at Sacramento State University.
Two schools in the California State University system, Sacramento State University and San Francisco State University, began some form of divestment last year after meeting with student protesters. San Francisco State University confirmed the offloading of assets in Lockheed Martin, Leonard,o and Palantir, while some questions remain surrounding the mechanics of Sacramento State’s divestment.
Questions linger surrounding the mechanics and concrete implications of divestment. A recently killed congressional bill would have expanded penalties for boycotting and divestment.
Marcus Bode, an undergraduate and hunger striker at California State University, Long Beach, cited his university’s partnership with Boeing, a major supplier to the Israel Defense Forces, as something that would disappear under divestment. Bode can consume water, powder electrolytes, and sports fluid under the conditions of the strike, and said that he is already feeling the physical effects of the strike, including aching joints, muscle cramps, and lightheadedness.
“We don’t see those increases in tuition and fees, those hikes and prices, being returned as a benefit to the student. It isn’t being reinvested into our campus and into our student body,” Bode said. “It’s instead being used to fund war and genocide abroad.”
Bode and his fellow hunger strikers face an uphill battle with the university system.
Amy Bentley-Smith, CSU’s director of media relations, said the system and its campuses would not alter investment policies but honor the right to protest. “We will continue to uphold the values of free inquiry, peaceful protest, and academic freedom,” Smith said to the Guardian in a statement.
Cy Neff is a reporter at The Guardian.
(2/5) University of Oregon protesters begin a hunger strike for Gaza
Protesters at the University of Oregon began a hunger strike Monday to bring attention to starvation in Gaza.
Around 470,000 people in Gaza are facing “catastrophic hunger,” according to a UN-backed report released last week. As NPR reported Monday, Israel has now promised to ease its months-long blockade and allow some food into the region.
In Eugene, some UO students and employees announced that they would stop eating starting Monday morning, in order to pressure local leaders to respond to the crisis.
“We don’t want them to be able to ignore this,” said Phia Dornberg, an organizer with UO Jewish Voice for Peace. “We want them to know that people are suffering, that students care, and that they’re going to be doing something about it.”
The protesters want UO to divest from companies with ties to Israel and provide more protections for pro-Palestinian activists on campus.
Protesters are also asking the public to call Oregon’s elected leaders and congressional delegation, demanding they speak out against Israel’s blockades.
Dornberg said she’s been inspired by similar hunger strikes at other schools like the University of California, Los Angeles.
During the strikes, Dornberg said some participants will eat a meal only once every two to three days, in order to reflect Gaza’s current food availability.
Meanwhile, she said she and two other strikers are planning indefinite strikes—meaning they’ll completely refuse to eat until it is no longer safe for them to do so.
“We really want to go as long as we can to show ‘what does this feel like? What is the reality of not having any food?” said Dornberg. “Because it’s not something most of us have ever had to contend with.”
In an email to KLCC on Monday, UO representative Eric Howald said the university respects students’ right to express their views, but advised caution about their methods.
“We urge them to choose forms of expression that prioritize their health, safety, and overall well-being,” said Howald, “while adhering to UO freedom of speech guidelines.”
The hunger strike comes nearly one year after the end of a pro-Palestinian encampment on UO’s campus, which resulted in multiple students facing conduct code violations.
(3/5) Pro-Palestine Yale students continue hunger strike over Gaza aid crisis
Organizers say university president Maurie McInnis refuses to meet students
By Cody Combs, Reposted from The National, May 16, 2025
A hunger strike involving several Yale students in solidarity with Gaza is entering its seventh day, with organisers demanding the university’s financial divestment from Israel, among other changes.
Yalies4Palestine, a group recently stripped of its official club status by administrators, announced its plans to begin a hunger strike last Saturday to bolster similar hunger strikes related to the Israel-Gaza war taking place at California State University, UCLA, and Stanford University.
“We felt like a hunger strike was really our final option, and I think we especially felt called to it because of the famine in Gaza,” one organiser said.
At least six students, one staff member, and a Yale graduate taking part are demanding that administrators begin a financial and ideological divestment from Israel, adopt a human rights screening policy for investments, repeal “restrictive free speech police,s” and protect students taking part in the strike.
Two of the students involved, speaking on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retribution by administrators, said they’d tried to meet Yale’s president, Maurie McInnis, but she had not responded.
“The university has very much not engaged with our core demands, and their only interactions with us have been aimed towards offering medical support, both like physical and psychological,” said one of the demonstrators, adding that the group had peacefully gathered in the lobby near the president’s office, but were later asked to leave.
“They felt very threatened by our peaceful presence, and then they weaponised that,” the student added, saying that entrances to the building were later locked.
Another demonstrator told The National that Yale College dean Pericles Lewis met the hunger strikers on Wednesday, but the dialogue went nowhere.
“He was very patronising in his response, telling us that we were endangering our own health, and anyone supporting the strike was essentially responsible for any self-harm done.”
Yale’s media relations team confirmed to The National that Mr Lewis met students, but disagreed on exactly what was said.
“As with other Yale University administrators, Dean Lewis’s foremost concern is for the students’ health and well-being,” read a statement.
“He also sought to have a conversation with the students, who are affiliated with the group Yalies4Palestine, and to bring back what he heard to President Maurie McInnis.”
The demonstrators, however, say that Yale’s president is going against precedents set by other US university leaders who have met with demonstrators sympathetic to the plight of millions of Gazans.
“It’s pretty damning, I mean you have this leadership position of a billion-dollar corporation and they refuse to meet individuals who have this extreme intention, put their body on the line, what does that say about the institution?” one of the students said.
As for the group’s demands for divestment, among other policy changes, Yale said that various committees and high-level staffers at the university have listened to and deliberated similar demands for more than a year.
Yale’s statement said divestment has been “formally proposed” through the university’s Advisory Committee on Investor Responsibility and Corporation Committee on Investor Responsibility twice in the past two years.
“In both instances, divestment was not recommended for action,” the Yale statement said, adding that it always encourages students to go through the proper processes to try to change policies.
Meanwhile, Israel’s total blockade of Gaza continues to block food, water, or medicine from entering the enclave.
Some humanitarian agencies have described it as the worst starvation campaign in modern history.
On Wednesday, a new humanitarian foundation said it would begin delivering Gaza aid by the end of May. The UN has criticised the organisation.
Israel’s punishing campaign in the enclave, which followed the 2023 attacks by Hamas-led fighters on Israel that resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people and the capture of 240 hostages, has killed about 53,000 people and injured at least 118,000.
The war has prompted heightened Islamophobia as well as a spread of anti-Semitism in various parts of the US.
Like other universities, this is not Yale’s first controversy over how it has handled students and staff expressing support for Palestine, and it is not its first confrontation with Yalies4Palestine.
Last month, Yale administrators faced criticism after deciding to rescind the student club status of Yalies4Palestine.
Yale said the former club played the role in organising what administrators deemed to be a disruptive protest, an accusation the group has vigorously denied.
Also in April, Yale sacked Helyeh Doutaghi, a scholar of international law who was accused of having connections to terrorism by an artificial intelligence-powered news site, Jewish Onliner.
In a statement to The National, Alden Ferro, a senior associate of public affairs at Yale, said the school repeatedly tried to talk to Ms Doutaghi and her lawyer, but she refused to meet to respond to questions.
Cody Combs is Technology Policy Editor for The National, where he reports on the innovations and trends that will be impacting our world for years to come.
(4/5) Student Hunger Strikes for Gaza Continue; UCLA Activist Hospitalized After 9 Days Without Food
Reposted from Democracy Now, May 19, 2025
A hunger-striking student at UCLA was hospitalized Sunday on the ninth day of her action. Maya Abdullah is one of a growing group of students at universities across the country who’ve launched hunger strikes amid the Israeli blockade on Gaza to demand that their schools divest from Israel and protect free speech on campus. Hunger strikes are ongoing at Yale, Stanford, and California State University.
In the nation’s capital, a recent graduate of George Washington University delivered a blistering commencement speech in front of a roaring crowd.
Cecilia Culver: “I cannot celebrate my own graduation without a heavy heart, knowing how many students in Palestine have been forced to stop their studies, expelled from their homes, and killed for simply remaining in the country of their ancestors.”
That was George Washington University graduate Cecilia Culver. She called on fellow graduates to withhold donations until GWU discloses and divests from Israel.
(5/5) Students across the U.S. are going on a hunger strike as Israeli-engineered famine takes hold in Gaza
Student protestors across the country are adapting their strategies to Trump’s crackdown on the pro-Palestine movement, but it’s safe to say the activism is not slowing down.
By Michael Arria, Reposted from Mondoweiss, May 20, 2025
In recent weeks, students across multiple university campuses in the United States have launched hunger strikes in solidarity with the people of Gaza enduring famine. The protesters are also calling on their school to cut ties with weapons manufacturers and other companies connected to Israel.
In addition to the hunger strikes, we have seen new encampments and even campus occupations. Despite the growing suppression of the movement, students have achieved multiple divestment victories and are pushing for more wins.
Student protestors across the country are adapting their strategies to Trump’s crackdown, but it’s safe to say the activism is not slowing down.
Hunger strikes
More than two dozen California students began a fast on May 5, with more schools joining in the proceeding days.
“If ever there was a moment that demands civil disobedience, it is the hour of genocide. We walk in the footsteps of earlier Stanford students who occupied this same plaza to end the Vietnam War and later to force partial divestment from apartheid South Africa. Now that the baton passes to us. On October 20, 2023, Stanford students built the nation’s first Gaza solidarity encampment,” said Stanford University hunger strikes in a statement published at Mondoweiss.
“For 120 days, hundreds of Stanford community members sustained this encampment to demand an end to the genocide in Palestine and to press Stanford University to act — by providing direct support for Palestinian students and, ultimately, by divesting its endowment from defense contractors and surveillance firms complicit in that genocide. Our university’s leadership and administration ignored the calls from the overwhelming majority of the Stanford student body to take action and only reacted with escalated repression.”
San Francisco State University (SFSU) students recently ended their strike after obtaining several commitments from their school. The administration said it would expand the implementation of the divestment policy and work toward a partnership with Palestinian universities.
San Francisco State University (SFSU) is one of three schools that have pressured their university to some level of divestment in the past and is building upon those earlier victories.
At a press conference about the development, a fourth-year SFSU student said the action could inspire other schools to take action.
“How are we able to study and learn and not feel a sense of duty to the students in Palestine who are without a single standing college because of a genocide funded by our student dollars?” she said. “Here at San Francisco State, we are the example. Our school shows we can divest for more on occupation. Students do not and should not have to be complicit in genocide just because they want education.”
Six students at Sacramento State, which has also previously adopted a divestment policy, also recently ended their hunger strike.
Amal Dawud, a Sacramento State student, said it’s a way to remind people about what hundreds of thousands of people are experiencing in Gaza.
“It’s been two years and it’s been two months, and they haven’t had food entering the Gaza Strip,” a student told the local news, referring to Israel’s ongoing blockade on humanitarian aid. “That’s kind of why a hunger strike was the method that we chose.”
At UCLA, student activist Maya Abdullah was hospitalized on the 9th day of her hunger strike.
Students with the group Yalies4Palestine recently met with Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis amid an ongoing hunger strike at the school. The demonstrators are demanding that Yale divest from weapons manufacturers, adopt a human rights-based investment strategy, end its academic partnerships with Israel, and grant amnesty for student protesters.
Lewis told the strikers that he couldn’t grant students amnesty without knowing their plans. Yale President Maurie McInnis has refused to meet with the protesters so far.
“Maurire McInnis, the people are watching,” said Yalies4Palestine in a statement on social media. “Our support is overwhelming, and our numbers are growing.”
“The strikers demand a response,” it continues. “McInnis, meet with us. Commencement is coming. Your starving students are still here. We are not going anywhere.”
Encampments
In addition to the hunger strikes, students have also erected Gaza solidarity encampments this semester, but most have been shut down by campus police departments.
On May 8, students at Johns Hopkins University erected an encampment on the campus’s Keyser Quad, declaring it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone, in solidarity with Palestinians.
According to the protesters, over 30 university cops (JHPD) and Baltimore police pulled the canopies down, injuring multiple students.
“Cops mangled the metal so that the legs were sticking in all directions and support beams were twisting,” said one student. “The person I was linking arms with got stuck bending over under the canopy trying to get someone else out—their heads were getting caught between metal poles in the canopy roof, and we weren’t able to get them out until JHPD stopped pulling it down for a moment.”
Last month, about 200 student protesters gathered at Yale University’s Beinecke Plaza to protest far-right Israeli security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to New Haven. An encampment was erected, but eventually disbanded over fear of retribution from the school.
The next day, Yale College revoked the aforementioned Yalies4Palestine’s status as a registered student group, despite the fact that they did not organize the protest.
At Dartmouth College, students disbanded an encampment after the administration agreed to set up an immigration legal fund for international students and release a formal response to the protesters’ divestment demands by May 20.
Palestine Solidarity Coalition member Ramsey Alsheikh told the student paper that the development was “a massive victory” and “a step forward for the student movement,” but pointed out that the activism would not be stopping.
“We will move forward,” said Alsheikh. “This is not the end.”
Last spring’s encampments also continue to reverberate.
In 2024, students at the University of San Francisco pressured their school into adopting a divestment task force through their encampment protest. Their Students for Justice in Palestine chapter secured a seat on the task force, and protesters investigated the school’s investments. Since discovering the university’s economic connections to Palantir, L3Harris, GE Aerospace, and RTX Corporation, they have been pressuring the administration to divest from the U.S. defense companies over their contracts with the Israeli military.
Last month, the University of San Francisco agreed to sell off its direct investments in weapons manufacturers.
An organizer who spoke with Mondoweiss said the victory was achieved through the persistence of the student movement.
“It’s been exhausting for students, but they haven’t faltered,” she said. “People have worked to pressure the administration, whether it’s through the student government or the alumni. Our comrades disrupted graduation last year. All these different things have increased our visibility.”
The activists acknowledge that this is a major win, but they say the fight is not over. They want the school to overhaul its investment strategy entirely and sever its remaining connections to Israel.
Columbia library occupation
On May 7, Columbia University students occupied the school’s Butler Library to protest the genocide in Gaza.
Columbia’s administration quickly called in the cops. Roughly 80 people were arrested, and the school swiftly suspended students over the action, including some who didn’t even participate in the protest.
In a statement, acting Columbia president Claire Shipman said she was compelled to call in police because the students were causing “substantial chaos.” She also blamed the Trump administration’s targeting of campus activists on the protesters.
“I am deeply disturbed at the idea that, at a moment when our international community feels particularly vulnerable, a small group of students would choose to make our institution a target,” said Shipman.
In the New York Times, reporter Sharon Otterman contrasted the protest with the occupation of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall last year, when the only public safety officer present left the scene.
“The university’s newly assertive response satisfied many of those who were harshly critical of Columbia’s management of last year’s protests, including the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force, which has cut more than $400 million in research funding from Columbia, citing what it called the university’s failure to protect Jewish students,” wrote Otterman. “Columbia is negotiating with the task force in hopes of having the federal dollars restored.”
The Trump task force praised Shipman’s response to the library occupation. “She has stepped in to lead Columbia at a critical juncture and has met the moment with fortitude and conviction,” said the group in a statement.
Michael Arria is a reporter at Mondoweiss.
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