Let’s call it great moments in intermittent fasting.
Yesterday, we learned that more than 30 pro Palestinian Harvard students had embarked on what the Crimson called a “12 hour hunger strike.”
Or, as Mark Wahlberg knows it: six more hours until he can eat an early dinner.
The actor fasts 18 hours a day, five days a week.
His cause is ripped abs.
But the Harvard classmates’ exhibition of brief nutritional abstinence was to show solidarity with 17 students at Brown University who took an eight-day hunger strike — vowing to not succumb to that rumble in their tummies until the school’s corporation caved and divested from Israel.
Apologies to Gandhi, suffragists and the Irish Republicans (some of whom actually starved themselves to death for their cause). These folks in Cambridge merely skipped a meal at the dining hall and boasted about it on Instagram.
Twelve hours. What happened to the old college try? Thankfully, they have two more decades to train for a colonoscopy prep.
Yes, what most people call weight management, they call meaningful protest — an indulgent move that produced way more mockery online than actual stomach grumbles from the fearless participants.
The school’s Palestinian Solidarity Committee’s Instagram account featured a few brave students explaining their reasons for taking part in this intestinal virtual signal.
Violet T.M. Barron, class of ’26 and an organizer with Harvard Jews for Palestine, said: “Until our universities divest, they are complicit and we are complicit — because we pay tuition — in the genocide in Gaza.”
Said another student called Rameen, “Refusing food for the day is a basic but necessary way to call for divestment.”
This half-baked starvation stunt, however, isn’t novel.
In November, “Sex and the City ” star Cynthia Nixon announced she was joining five politicians in their five-day hunger strike — demanding Biden push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza. But she only signed up for the two-day version.
It was likely too difficult to stay away from her beloved lox on a cinnamon raisin bagel for the full haul. Sure, it helped with her next costume fitting, but it also exposed the truth: She is merely an actress playing an activist.
It’s like jumping into the last 50 yards of a marathon to usher your friend, who trained for six months, over the finish line — a nice show of support, but you didn’t even flirt with breaking a sweat.
According to the Crimson, the Palestine Solidarity Committee wrote that they were sending “solidarity to @browndivestcoalition for their incredible hunger strike.”
Spoiler alert, the school did not acquiesce to any demands.
Brown President Christina Paxson said in a statement, “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.”
These narcissistic, empty flexes show a gross misunderstanding of the complexity of the conflict between Israel andHamas war and the larger history of the area. But that doesn’t matter.
Many of these hunger strikers came up in the age of performative protest, with pink pussy hats and BLM marches — causes listed in their bios are just as integral as pronouns. Many on these elite campuses embody a generational delusion where they are calling the shots; in many cases, the adults have let them lead. They can occupy a building, stage a die, shut down traffic or participate in other mass disruptions.
And for a while, they’ve been rewarded with safe spaces and coddling.
College kids have always been vessels for far out leftist belief systems. Idealists feeling their way through their perceived jungle of injustices.
But it doesn’t mean they should all be taken seriously or dictate policy with their skewed worldview honed by the great philosophers of TikTok.
Though perhaps a small hunger strike isn’t a terrible idea. Enthusiasts of intermittent fasting say the practice provides mental clarity, which seems to be in short supply these days.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
