More than 30 students at Harvard refused to eat for 12 hours Friday in a bid to show support for pro-Palestinian students at Brown University on an eight-day hunger strike.
The 17 students at Brown started their hunger strike on Feb. 2 in an attempt to pressure the Brown Corporation, the school’s governing board, to divest from Israel, according to the Crimson; both the Harvard strike and the brown strike ended on Feb. 9. The students planned to strike until the Brown Corporation divested funding from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine,” but stopped after Brown University President Christian Paxson refused to meet their demands. (RELATED: House Committee Expands Antisemitism Investigation Into Elite Schools To Include Another Top University)
“To send solidarity to @browndivestcoalition for their incredible hunger strike, 30+ Harvard students committed to a day-long hunger strike to prove to university corporations that we will not back down,” the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Coalition wrote in an Instagram post on Friday, according to the Crimson.
People enter and exit Harvard Yard at a gate at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 12, 2023. (Photo by JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty Images)
Harvard has seen a multitude of pro-Palestinian protests and activism since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel.
Harvard students held a “die-in” protest at the Harvard Business School in October, and over 200 students held another die-in Monday to protest airstrikes in Gaza. Pro-Palestinian protestors mobbed an Israeli student in November, and more than 30 Harvard student organizations signed a letter blaming Israel for the attacks in October.
Former Harvard President Claudine Gay was called to testify in Congress due to antisemitism on campus and refused at the Dec. 5 hearing to say if calling for the genocide of Jews violated the school’s code of conduct. Over 70 Democratic and Republican representatives called for Gay to be removed from the school after her testimony, and Gay eventually resigned after multiple rounds of plagiarism allegations.
The school is currently under investigation by the House Education Committee and by the Department of Education for alleged antisemitism on campus.
“Throughout the protest, the students’ health and well-being was our primary focus, as well as ensuring they understand the mechanisms available to all members of the Brown community to request that the University consider divesting its endowment from the assets of specific companies. We also made clear that the bar for divestment is very high — the University consistently rejects calls to use the endowment as a tool for political advocacy on contested issues,” Brown University President Christina Paxson said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Harvard did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comments.
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