\u201cJust a heads up that the lectures I give may be a little bit wobbly and poor quality,\u201d Kao allegedly said during a class in the fall.<\/p>\n
Based on these statements, the university determined that Kao \u201cmisused\u201d his authority over students. Even without explicit acknowledgement of the advocacy during class time, the \u201cvisible toll\u201d of the hunger strike, and Kao\u2019s own admission that the strike may have affected his teaching, was enough for the university to determine it a violation of policy, Hermalin wrote.<\/p>\n
The University Council\u2013American Federation of Teachers, the union that represents lecturers, filed a grievance against the \u201cwrongful discipline\u201d of Kao, said field representative Jessica Conte. And STEM 4 Palestine<\/a>, a campus group that Kao co-founded, announced a hunger strike beginning Wednesday, in solidarity with Kao and other \u201crepressed academics.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPeyrin is known as a committed educator. He is not just committed to students at Berkeley,\u201d the group told KQED by email. \u201cPutting his own body on the line, he demonstrated public commitment to the students of Palestine, whose universities have been bombed into rubble using technology our university builds.\u201d<\/p>\n Kao maintained that all of the discussions in question took place outside of official class time, during an optional lecture that many students elected not to attend, and that the hunger strike took place entirely outside of the classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were very careful not to talk about it in class with any of our students or any of my students or my staff. And it was something that I think is totally protected by the First Amendment, because I\u2019m doing it in my own capacity,\u201d Kao said.<\/p>\n He also pushed back against the university\u2019s claims that his ethics discussion \u2014 and his presentation on cloud-computing contracts between Google and Amazon with Israel \u2014 was not germane to the classroom.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are companies that our students are going to work for. We\u2019re giving our students the tools that they\u2019re then going to use to go and work for these companies and others that are complicit in this ongoing American-Israeli genocide in Gaza,\u201d Kao said. \u201cWhen you don\u2019t talk about this, that is also making a political decision.\u201d<\/p>\n Academic freedom enshrined in the First Amendment protects a professor\u2019s right to discuss pedagogically relevant material during class, and allows some breathing room \u2014 as long as it\u2019s furthering the purpose of the course, said Zach Greenberg, director of the Faculty Legal Defense Fund<\/a> at advocacy group FIRE. However, the university has some leeway to limit free speech of faculty within the bounds of the institution\u2019s own academic freedom and, ultimately, to make the judgment call.<\/p>\n \u201cThe question that we always ask when it comes to political speech is, what\u2019s related to the class and what were they speaking as a professor or as a private citizen?\u201d Greenberg said. \u201cAnd if you\u2019re going on tangents during class or expressing a political advocacy to students during class as a professor, you\u2019re on company time.\u201d<\/p>\n As a California state employee, Kao was entitled to a Skelly hearing, in which the proposed disciplinary action is reviewed by a third party. The lecturer met with Eric Meyer, the dean of UC Berkeley\u2019s School of Information, but his appeal was denied, Kao said.<\/p>\n He\u2019s currently working to fundraise<\/a> the salary he will lose for the next semester, about $68,000, Kao said, which he vowed to donate to mutual-aid efforts in Gaza.<\/p>\n KQED\u2019s <\/em>Ted Goldberg<\/em><\/a> contributed to this report.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/cdn.kqed.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/10\/2025\/03\/GettyImages-2149730456.jpg\")