Boston University professor Nathan Phillips, who teaches in the Earth and Environment department, began a hunger strike last month over the arrests of Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil and his university’s removal of signs expressing political speech on campus. Sampan reporter Harmony Witte caught up with Phillips shortly after he began his hunger strike in support of free speech. At the time, the professor said he was healthy and alert. Following is an edited version of that conversation. A longer version will be available at Sampan.org.
Sampan: What inspired your hunger strike?
Phillips: Well, as many people, I was shocked and outraged by what I saw on the streets of Somerville, coming on the heels of the unconstitutional and outrageous kidnapping and disappearing of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University. And there’s just been too much silence in my university and elsewhere. There’s been a lot of outrage — and a vocal outrage as well, which is great — but it’s not getting up to the highest levels where it needs to be, and that’s why I took the action.
Sampan: How did you come up with hunger strikes as your method of protest?
Phillips: You know, first of all, I want to preface this by saying I am not encouraging anyone else to take this action because there are serious health considerations. And also, it’s an action that comes from a place of privilege, because I recognize that there are many people who could not afford to do this for economic reasons, for health reasons … for so many different reasons. So I want to just state that off the bat. Having said that, I do have the privilege and the good fortune to be in a health situation that allows me to do this and an economic situation that allows me to do this. And it’s about the simplest action that one can do. Simple doesn’t mean easy. Simple doesn’t mean, you know, not arduous. But it’s simple…. So it’s something I can do. It’s something no one can stop me from doing, and it’s something that can push the issue into the forefront, where It needs to be. In some ways, it’s similar to things that people do for a cause that involve endurance and perseverance and sacrifice….
Sampan: So will you tell me a little bit about your previous hunger strikes? You’ve done it twice before.
Phillips: Yes. The first one was in 2020, and it was in protest of … the compressor station along the south shore of Boston in Weymouth. So this was in solidarity with the … residents against the compressor station…. It’s like the needle that broke the camel’s back that you see these injustices occurring and then you see something so egregiously outrageous that it just compels an action to really push it into the forefront. That was a full 14 day hunger strike. So 14 consecutive 24 hour periods of no calorie intake. I learned a lot from that experience and I don’t regret it one bit. Even though the compressor station finally got built, it’s still in litigation. The residents against the compressor station have never given up. They’ve never backed down, and they’re still fighting this injustice in court. …. The second one was around 2022, and that was a seven or eight day hunger strike. As a group, we called ourselves the Free Radical Strike, but we were protesting the sighting of another polluting power plant in an environmental justice community in Peabody….
Sampan: You said in an interview last week that your strike this time will last until federal authorities free university students who are detained for participating in pro-Palestine campus protests. Do you have any sense of how long this might be?
Phillips: Well, I think they should all be released today. It’s so outrageous and egregious that the Trump administration, pardon my reference, but it’s like they’re defecating on the U.S. Constitution. The First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment right to due process have been trashed and I don’t know how anyone in a position of authority or privilege can stand aside and just watch this. So this is an indictment of those with privilege and job security like myself. Why aren’t we shouting this from the rooftops? They should be released today. If you’re not, if you’re, if someone is silent about this. Silence is complicity. They are by their silence, supporting essentially the equivalent of Gestapo ICE actions. And I can’t stand silent. I can’t stand aside.
We followed up with Phillips earlier this week and he said that on his 18th day of fasting he shifted a bread and water vigil after his doctor told him not doing so could be a risk to his health and that his goal was to preserve his health “and still be able to stay in solidarity with Rümeysa, Mahmoud and others until May 9, the date of Rümeysa’s bail hearing.”
— Adam Smith contributed to this report.
