- Ava Volman | Staff
- Oct 8, 2025 (DailyCal.org)
After 38 days, UC Berkeley lecturer Peyrin Kao suspended his hunger strike. Kao was protesting the war on Gaza and “the use of tech in Israel’s genocide in Gaza” earlier this week.
Kao, a lecturer in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department, or EECS, began his strike Aug. 27 and said he recently concluded it to “avoid permanent damage to (his) body.”
“By launching a hunger strike, I hoped to bring the starvation here to Berkeley, and send a message to the campus community and leadership that starvation and genocide is not just some anonymous event happening thousands of miles away,”Kao said in an email. “It’s a war crime happening with the support of our university’s investments in Israel.”
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Over the course of the hunger strike, Kao restricted his diet to foods available to Gazans, such as bread, flour and pasta. He also consumed water, but with the recognition that “there is a massive shortage of clean water in Gaza.”
Kao described his experience as “exhausting,” as he was put through “severe emotional stress” from extreme hunger.He added that this experience is only a “tiny fraction of what Palestinians in Gaza have faced for the past 700 days.”
While the hunger strike did not yield its original disclosure or divestment demands, Kao commented on the university’s inclusion of his name in documents provided by campus administration to the federal government in response to their antisemitism investigation.
“Their reliance on scare tactics proves that they have no real rebuttal to their complicity in genocide,” Kao said in an email. “We are on the right side of history, and we can defeat this suppression of free speech by continuing to speak out and organize for Palestinian liberation.”
Kao said the reason why the strike was possible was due to support from multiple campus organizations, including the recently formed Berkeley EECS for Palestine. These organizations were responsible for running social media accounts, scheduling media appearances and organizing fundraising efforts, according to Kao.
Although he has suspended his hunger strike, Kao emphasized the importance of continuing fundraising efforts to “mitigate the forced starvation in Gaza.” He plans to continue raising money for Nedal Mohammed, who is located in central Gaza and provides food and water for Palestinians who have been displaced.
“Although the hunger strike action is over, the struggle for Palestinian liberation continues, and will continue until we see a free Palestine, in our lifetimes,” Kao said in an email.
