Cal Lecturer Suspends Hunger Strike In Support of Gaza: 'Difficult Decision'

BERKELEY, CA — A UC Berkeley lecturer has suspended his hunger strike in support of Gaza after 38 days.

Peyrin Kao, a computer science lecturer at Cal, went on a hunger strike more than a month ago to protest the starvation of Palestinians and the use of technology in Israel's continuing attack on Gaza.

This week, he said he'd made the "difficult decision" to end his hunger strike to prevent permanent damage to his body.

"I take this action with a great sense of guilt, knowing that the people in Gaza do not have a choice to stop in the way that I do," he said online. "I'm very sorry that I wasn't able to continue this and live up to your expectations."

Kao's weeks-long journey has been documented on the social media page Berkeleyeec4palestine, where he says he started in solidarity with the people of Gaza, who have been victims of a mass starvation at the hands of Israel.

He called for workers, students and staff in the computer science department to take a stand to "o stop the atrocities happening with our taxpayer dollars and supported with the high-tech weapons that we helped develop."

Throughout his 38 days on the hunger strike, Kao continued to teach his classes at Cal and raise awareness of how people in Palestine continue to be impacted by Israel's occupation in Gaza.

He described what it was like to be on the hunger strike, saying that some days it was difficult to even get out of bed. But, Kao said, it offered perspective on what the people in Gaza have been going through for hundreds of days.

"Things are getting pretty exhausting," Kao said during Day 28 of his hunger strike. "Opening doors is really heavy now, which is something I wasn't expecting. But again, anything I'm feeling is just a fraction of what people in Gaza are feeling."

Kao was also one of more than 150 students and staff UC Berkeley reported to the Trump administration in September, in what university officials say were efforts to comply with an investigation into antisemitism on campus.

Despite ending the hunger strike, Kao and the Berkeley EECS 4 Palestine are still raising funds, which are being donated to help feed hundreds of families in Palestine.