Owen Martin, right, listens to Shaykh Alauddin Elbakri speak at White Memorial Plaza in Stanford, California, on May 19, 2025. Three dozen students and staff ended their Stanford hunger strike in solidarity with Palestinians at risk of starving in Gaza, after the university refused to negotiate. (Estefany Gonzalez for KQED)
The strike began after similar movements took root across California State University campuses in the Bay Area, calling for university leaders to meet protesters’ demands to divest from companies they say fund Israel’s war in Gaza and take actions meant to ensure campus free speech.
Sponsored
Despite a goal to continue until administrators agreed to negotiate, the protesters announced they would end their effort following the final day of classes, calling the school’s failure to meet with them “shameful.”
“We are stopping the hunger strike, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to stop pushing for what we want in general,” said Yousef Helal, a first-year master’s student who participated in the strike. “It just means we’re going to seek different methods and we’ll do whatever we need to do until we meet our demands and until we can guarantee peace and safety for every Palestinian.”
A person writes “Gaza is starving” at White Memorial Plaza in Stanford, California, on May 19, 2025. Several Stanford University students have been on a hunger strike for more than a week, pledging not to eat until the university agrees to divest from companies that they say are supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. (Estefany Gonzalez for KQED)
In addition to making Stanford’s investments public and divesting from companies that provide surveillance technology and weapons to Israel, the hunger strikers also called for the school to roll back strict protest regulations put in place last fall, to urge the Santa Clara County district attorney to drop charges against a dozen people linked to a protest on campus last June and to denounce the Trump administration’s targeting of pro-Palestinian student activists.
The strike took place in waves, with about a dozen protesters at a time refusing food for about a week in solidarity. Some participated for at least 10 days, Helal said. Others had to end their protest early due to severe health impacts, according to a health professional supporting the strikers.
Throughout, “the administration has refused to talk to us at all,” Helal said. “Their students are literally at their doorsteps, two minutes away from the president’s office, starving, suffering … It’s very shameful.”
In a statement last month, Stanford spokesperson Luisa Rapport said the university respects the rights of students to express their views in ways “within the limits of the university’s viewpoint-neutral time, place, and manner rules.”
“We have urged them to consider forms of expression that do not jeopardize their health and well-being,” she said via email.
The end of the strike reflects a year of growing hostility between pro-Palestinian protesters and administrators on Stanford’s campus, strikers said.
Stanford was among more than 130 schools across the country whose students spent weeks camped out on their campuses last spring, bringing attention to U.S. support for Israel and pressuring their universities to pull financial investments from companies that supply weapons or surveillance technology to the country.
After a group of protesters occupied the university president’s office in June and refused to leave until they were arrested, administrators shut down Stanford’s encampment.
Mark Allen Cu, 21, a third-year student at Stanford University, stands for a portrait at White Memorial Plaza in Stanford, California, on Monday, May 19, 2025. Cu is one of the several Stanford University students participating in a hunger strike, pledging not to eat until the university agrees to divest from companies that they say are supporting Israel’s war in Gaza. (Estefany Gonzalez for KQED)
Just before the current academic year began, the university announced updated “freedom of expression” policies, including a new requirement that demonstrators remove face coverings when asked and a clarification of their camping policy, requiring that tents and structures be removed overnight regardless of whether people are present.
“We’ve had one major rally where we marched here from White Plaza around the main quad and back, and within five minutes, you saw administrators swarming, asking us to disperse, threatening to send the police to come and disperse us,” first-year Owen Martin told KQED in May. He said the relationship between the protesters and the school had changed since the previous spring, when he visited the encampment during a campus tour.
Other students said they felt like the protests were held to a “double standard” by the school.
In the fall, the university also declined to take action on students’ requests to make its investments public and divest from companies protesters have said were benefiting Israel’s war in Gaza, citing their interest that the school’s massive endowment remain unpolitical and confidential.
“Just as the University does not take positions on partisan or political issues, the Trustees maintain a strong presumption against using the endowment as an instrument to advance any particular social or political agenda,” the Board of Trustees’ Special Committee on Investment Responsibility said in a statement in October.
Helal said Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine plans to find new ways to put pressure on the administration next fall. Throughout the summer, Stanford’s Students for Justice in Palestine will be holding an online “summer school” focused on the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and U.S. involvement.
“We’re really trying to keep the energy high,” he said. “While maybe the hunger strike wasn’t as effective as we had hoped, that only means that we have to find other methods, and we will continue to push. We will not stop, we will not be scared into silence.”
Sponsored
lower waypoint
Stay in touch. Sign up for our daily newsletter.
To learn more about how we use your information, please read our privacy policy.
