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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.
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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 baton passes to us. On October 20, 2023, Stanford students built the nation’s first Gaza‑solidarity encampment,” said the Stanford University’s 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 goes to show 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.
UCLA student Maya Abdallah has been hospitalised on the ninth day of her hunger strike.
— TRT World (@trtworld) May 19, 2025
She announced the strike on May 10, calling for her university to divest from companies linked to Israel pic.twitter.com/Mg34GYCIGV
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 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.”
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 out 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 the 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.
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