UC Berkeley aide offers students extra credit for attending pro-Palestine walkout

A teaching assistant at the University of California Berkeley offered her students extra credit for attending a pro-Palestine walkout amid the ongoing Hamas-Israel war, before administrators nixed the option.

Victoria Huynh, who is an aide in lecturer Harvey Dong’s course entitled “Asian American Communities and Race Relations,” gave the students the incentive in an email Tuesday, J. The Jewish News of Northern California reported.

“We’re offering a field trip and/or extra credit opportunity,” she wrote in the email, which was posted on X by a user who obtained the message.

“Students can watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative using this linktree,” the Ph.D. student in ethnic studies wrote. “Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade.”

Huynh said the students must provide photo proof of their extra credit activities to earn the points.

She concluded by stating that two of her class sections would spend some time during their next class “talking about Palestinian history in relation to class concepts like colonialism, imperialism, and Third World solidarity.”

The email has been shared widely on X, where it garnered more than 2.3 million views and drew condemnation​ from pro-Israel activists who called it indoctrination.

This is a real e-mail distributed at an Asian studies class @UCBerkeley.This is the same institution that welcomed in disgraced SF DA, Chesa Budin. pic.twitter.com/pAUmGvQslJ

“Extra credit for protesting anything is pathetic,” Florida-based attorney Matt Sarelson wrote on X. “Extra credit for participating in a pro-Hamas protest is evil.”

“Another unconscionable attempt to brainwash students,” wrote activist David Lange.

On Wednesday, UC Berkeley spokesperson Dan Mogulof told J. that “as soon as the administration was made aware of the assignment it moved quickly to ensure that it would be changed.

“The situation has been remedied,” he added.

Mogulof cited a policy adopted by the University of California Board of Regents in 1970 and amended in 2005.

“Misuse of the classroom by, for example, allowing it to be used for political indoctrination, for purposes other than those for which the course was constituted, or for providing grades without commensurate and appropriate student achievement, constitutes misuse of the University as an institution,” the policy says, according to the outlet.“Generally speaking, awarding academic credit to students for participating in civil disobedience activity, or for deciding not to attend their classes, would, in most circumstances, be ‘misuse of the classroom’ pursuant to this policy,” Mogulof wrote.

Dong, a lecturer in the Department of Ethnic Studies — didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by the outlet.

Huynh did not immediately respond to a J. email.