The University of California, Berkeley, has come under a barrage of criticism after a class offered extra credit for students to participate in a walkout against Israel’s “settler-colonial occupation of Gaza.”
The class, called “Asian American Communities and Race Relations” and taught by graduate student Victoria Huynh, gave students two options for extra credit. Students could either attend the national student walkout on Sept. 25, or watch a documentary about Palestine and contact their local California representatives, according to Huynh’s email to students.
Huynh concluded the email by stating that the class would go over “Palestinian history in relation to class concepts like colonialism, imperialism, and Third World solidarity.”
According to her profile on Berkeley’s website, Huynh is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies and a second-generation Vietnamese American who grew up in San Diego, California. Her interests are listed as “critical refugee studies, abolition feminism, Vietnamese & Southeast Asian diaspora.”
Huynh’s extra credit assignment quickly drew ire on social media from various quarters.
Joel Griffith, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, described it as “government-funded antisemitic indoctrination” and said, “Extra class credit for walking out of class as an act of solidarity with Hamas’ terrorist aims of eradicating the world’s only Jewish state.”
Political scientist Yascha Mounk emphasized that “academic freedom absolutely does not entail professors giving students better grades for parroting their political point of view.”
Nico Perrino, executive vice president for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, wrote, “It’s one thing to ask a student to engage in the academic exercise of arguing a position they might not agree with in class (i.e. devil’s advocacy).”
“It’s another thing entirely,” Perrino added, “to make student grades contingent on going out into the public square to seek policy outcomes supportive of the position.”
In response, a Berkeley spokesperson said the university has “remedied” the situation by including more options for extra credit in the class.
The spokesperson noted, “Students can attend any local event they wish — such as a book talk or a panel discussion — related to the course’s subject…or they can watch any documentary they wish about the Middle East.”
On Sept. 25, as part of a national walkout, hundreds of Berkeley students walked out of class to protest against Israeli aggression and stand in solidarity with Palestine.
A Berkeley student at the walkout said, “We denounce the one-sided and dehumanizing narratives parroted by politicians, corporations and institutions, including UC Berkeley and especially Berkeley Law School, regarding the genocide of the people of Gaza.”