Nineteen undergraduates at Brown University are fasting to help Palestine, but, as noted in the tweet below, the school’s President, Christina Paxson, refuses to meet their demands. (The tweet includes an inevitable chant, but it’s a new one). Because the students say their hunger strike is “indefinite,” and because the President won’t pass on their demands to the relevant investing body, this looks to me like a standoff, ergo a “fast unto death.”
The difference between this fast and the famous fasts of Gandhi is that these students will not come close to death (I’ll make anybody a bet), and in that way are different from Gandhi’s hunger strikes, which laid him low (he once fasted for 21 days) and often worked when the British saw that Gandhi was (pardon the pun) dead serious, and they’d better give in lest India riot. However, even Gandhi’s fasts failed more often than they succeeded.
And here we have a President with a spine, who’s simply not going to give in to the student demands, which of course require that she abandon institutional neutrality in favor of a political position.
UPDATE: Brown President Christina Paxson has informed the hunger strikers that she will not meet their demands.
At the end of her email to the students, she “highlighted University mental health and well-being resources.” https://t.co/XewA9Tf0aQ pic.twitter.com/d0B7CilAEU
— Steve McGuire (@sfmcguire79) February 3, 2024
An earlier report from the Brown Daily Herald, the student newspaper, gives the reason for the hunger strike, which involves 19 students:
The Students announced the hunger strike during a Friday afternoon “rally for divestment” organized by the Palestine Solidarity Caucus and Jews for Ceasefire Now on the Main Green, at which approximately 350 were in attendance. Rally attendees flooded the campus center shortly after the announcement. Protestors also called on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Senator Jack Reed (D-R.I.) to support a ceasefire in Gaza.
The divestment resolution, the strikers say, should mirror the 2020 report released by the University’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Practices that recommended divestment from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine.” The committee has since been renamed the Advisory Committee on University Resources Management.
. . .The hunger strike — led by “students from several allied affinity and organizing (campus) groups” — is set to be the United States’ largest since Oct. 7, according to the strikers. Upon review of previous hunger strikes related to the Israel-Palestine war, The Herald corroborated this claim.
Students are also calling for the University to promote an “immediate ceasefire in Gaza” and fully divest its endowment “from specified companies enabling and profiting from Israel’s genocide.” But they will only refuse to accept food until the Corporation hears their resolution.
And from the latest Daily Herald, (click to read):
The President’s refusal:
On Sunday, 19 student protestors entered the third day of their hunger strike, despite the refusal of President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 to meet their demand that the Corporation, the University’s highest governing body, “hears and considers a divestment resolution,” during its meetings that begin this week.
The protestors demand that any divestment resolution be consistent with the 2020 report compiled by the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies, which recommended the University divest its endowment from “companies which profit from human rights abuses in Palestine.”
This advisory committee comprised faculty, staff, alumni, and both undergraduate and graduate students.
Paxson previously refused to adhere to the report, saying that “the recommendation did not adequately address the requirements for rigorous analysis and research as laid out in ACCRIP’s charge, nor was there the requisite level of specificity in regard to divestment.”
In her recent letter to the protestors, Paxson wrote that the first step toward requesting divestment “is not a Corporation resolution, but rather to submit a proposal to the Advisory Committee on University Resource Management” — the successor to ACCRIP.
Paxson also wrote that she will “not commit to bring a resolution to the February 2024 Corporation meeting or any future meeting of the Corporation.”
This the corportation will not hear the students’ demands, ergo they have to keep fasting. But it’s weird, because they could submit a proposal but refuse to do so. It’s confusing, but perhaps the protestors are demanding not just that the proposal be seen but be voted on.
The strikers have not submitted a proposal to ACURM, nor do they plan to do so, according to strike spokesperson Sam Stewart ’24.
The protesting students also wrote that they “will continue (the) hunger strike as long as President Paxson refuses to engage with our demands.”
In response to the students’ continuation of the strike, University Spokesperson Brian Clark reiterated that the 2020 proposal will not be brought forward for a vote, but that student protesters can submit a divestment proposal through ACURM.
One issue is if the students really continue fasting until their lives are in danger, the university, to avoid liability, will disenroll them (see my bolding below), or perhaps arrest them. This has happened before:
In a December sit-in, Paxson refused to revisit her decision not to adhere to a 2020 report compiled by ACCRIP. During this demonstration, 41 students demanded full divestment from “Israeli military occupation” and were subsequently arrested on trespassing charges and referred to ACURM.
In Friday’s letter, Paxson encouraged the protestors to look after their mental and physical well-being throughout the duration of the strike and shared University health resources available to students. She added that “protest is also unacceptable if it creates a substantial threat to personal safety of any member of the community.”
The University previously disenrolled four students participating in a hunger strike protesting the University’s partial divestment policy of South African apartheid in the 1980s. The then-administration cited health and liability concerns for the disenrollment, according to a 1986 article by The Herald.
I suspect nobody died in this one.
Two questions. First, does the University really invest in companies that “profit from human rights abuses in Palestine”? That itself is a slippery notion; does it mean any Israeli companies? The article says this:
The University is not directly invested in any weapons manufacturing companies, but a substantial portion of its endowment is invested through manager portfolios, The Herald previously reported. The University is contractually obligated not to disclose the companies in these portfolios, but told students that none have a focus in the defense industry.
“We are confident that our external managers have the highest level of ethics and share the values of the Brown community,” Clark wrote in a Sunday email to The Herald, “including the rejection of violence.”
The University of Chicago wouldn’t even go that far, but would simply say that the contents of its portfolio are confidential. I’m not sure whether the statement above will satisfy the students, but it apparently has not, for it’s not specific enough for the students.
Second, are the students really determined to fast unto death? I doubt it, for they’d be disenrolled (and that would be soon), and that would go on their record. Also, do they really want to die on this hill? Readers can speculate how long they’ll go without food before they give up.
At any rate, it’s good news that the Brown President will not accede to the students’ demands. If she did, there would be no limit to what students could demand in the future.
h/t: Luana
This hunger strike is brought to you by Ozempic.
That’s a good one ! Maybe some enterprising student could
set up a “Boycott Israel Solidarity Weight Loss Center”
+1
😅
Right.
Some how this sounds more like entitled students having a temper tantrum.
If they don’t get their demands, they self harm.
What is their personal skin in the game here?
Maybe they should go there and fight personally instead of go to class or stage this pseudo rage.
When I was in college, some men started to starve themselves to bring their weight down so they wouldn’t go fight in Vietnam. That I get. I would have done the same thing to avoid that war had I been called to arms if I didn’t think I could get CO status.
I get Gandhi’s hunger strike as they were living under British rule.
This hunger strike sounds quite different.
It’s telling that Paxson is directing the strikers to seek mental health counseling.
The description of last year’s Palestinian Studies workshop, part of the Middle East Studies department at Brown University, opens with the following sentence:
“Palestine boasts one of the most vibrant anti-colonial revolutionary traditions in modern history.”
Which is an interesting take, considering that:
“The army of King Abdullah’s Transjordan that went to war with Israel in the Arab–Israeli conflict of 1948–49 – the Arab Legion, later the Jordanian army – was a remarkable military unit. First, some 37 British officers and 25 British non-commissioned officers (NCOs) led the army; second, the Legion was the most effective Arab army in 1948, in large measure because Britain as Abdullah’s ally led, funded, trained, and equipped it.2 It was the only Arab army in 1948 that covered itself in glory, defeating Israel in two sets of battles in and around Jerusalem’s old city and at Latrun (15 May–18 July), interrupted by a ceasefire (11 June–8 July). Most British Servicemen in the Legion were seconded from the British army, some had private contracts with Abdullah, and three were detached from the colonial service, including the Arabic-speaking supreme commander of the Legion, former army officer John Bagot Glubb.” [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0968344517725541]
They also used RAF servicemen to assist in the formation of the Arab Legion Air Force later became the RJAF. They used the airfields built by the RAF between WWI & WWII.
Hire some food trucks to pull up outside the fasting site and flood them with the mouth watering smells of fresh barbecue, tacos, and cheeseburgers. Problem solved.
I wonder if the fasters would consider that a macroaggression.
Well, that’s exactly what they did to Navalny when he went on hunger strike to protest his prison conditions. And it’s just one of the many things they did (and continue to do) to torture him. These students may have unreasonable demands, but they still deserve to be treated humanely.
Once again, if this is “genocide”, it’s the most incompetent one ever executed in history:
https://jwbliliephoto.net/M/Palestinian_Terr_Pop.png
+2!
Given the recent history of redefining common terms to mean what they want it to mean (e.g. “violence,” “sex,” etc…), I suspect that fast/fasting may mean something like, only natural/whole/raw food, or some such. That way, they can still “sustain” themselves without “eating.” Such would be consistent with their recent language game shenanigans. Somebody needs to ask them what they mean by fast/fasting.
Why are they all wearing face masks? Is this to stop anyone knowing that they are craftily chewing perhaps?
Crap, Robert. You beat me to it!
Help me out here as I’ve never understood the concept of a hunger strike.
If you’re a pain in the backside of some big government, big industry, big military, big politician and you stop eating how is that effective? Go ahead, starve to death; one less screaming voice that the Biggies have to deal with. Your choice to forgo food was your own, not mine (I would have told you to chill out and have a hamburger).
Who cares if a bunch of Ivy League twits miss a few meals? In a world where there’s so much food insecurity we should be focused on getting those calories to children around the world who have no choice in not eating.
Jerry touches on this (explaining it somewhat) in the post.
The efficacy of a hunger strike depends almost entirely on the credibility of “your cause” and your audience.
The credibility of *this* particular cause is questionable. They should be striking (if they are smart) for both Palestine AND the kidnapped and tortured jews – for their safe return to israel.
As it stands, the strike rings hollow. And smacks of pseudo outrage. The audience is their own “echo chamber”.
I will say this for them: They are so far not simply being noisy poseurs.
But I am wondering about what they are doing with regard to their classes. Don’t they have exams? Isn’t there a paper due some time soon?
There’s something far -FAR- more important: outrage.
Perhaps they define “fasting” as refusing to take in classes, exams, term papers,
and so on—and define taking in “food” as just Inclusion, or maybe Equity.
Calls for divestment are foolish because the way to change a company’s policies is to buy enough stock to gain a controlling interest in the company. Selling stock allows people who disagree with the protest to control the company, thus guaranteeing a continuation of its policies. The students aren’t thinking.
Especially since selling shares lowers the price, making it easier for activist investors to buy more.
I can’t believe those students are actually starving themselves. I bet they’re sneaking food.
I have fasted for 5 days. I slept a lot. A lot of the hunger pangs desist on day 3. The main issue is weakness. If the students aren’t supplementing their water with electrolytes, they are fools. They are foolish regardless.
(A friend of mine fasted for three weeks in his 30s when his wife left him. He had been chubby. The grief and lack of food for 21 days made the pounds drop off. He was skinny as a rail when I met him and ate only one meal a day, effectively doing daily 18-hour intermittent fasting. My bet is the righteous virtue-signaling won’t be enough to keep the Brown students from giving up before day 10….)
I wonder if any of these fasters have previously complained of culinary cultural appropriation at Brown U. dining halls.
How do we know they’re actually fasting?
1) Smell their breath.
2) Check urine for ketones. (Test strips available at any drug store.)
3) Weigh them. (To avoid fat-shaming anyone, or creating contagious competitive eating disorders, you could weigh them in a batch on a large industrial scale.)
How about a hunger strike to get Hamas to quit embedding themselves in/under schools and hospitals instead.
Yes!
Why would Hamas be swayed by a hunger strike of idiot rich liberals in Rhode Island? They would just be more human munitions, expended in the campaign against Jews.