AP Photo/Michael Liedtke
- A UC Berkeley academic offered extra credit to students who attend a protest criticizing Israel.
- The Ph.D. student said students could get the extra credit if they send her proof of attendance.
- The university says the assignment has been "remedied" and students can go to any event they wish.
An academic at the University of California, Berkeley, offered students extra credit if they attended a protest criticizing Israel's "occupation" of Gaza or lobbied their local representative about the Palestinian territories, according to an email shared online.
Screenshots of the email, purportedly sent by Victoria Huynh on Tuesday, have been making the rounds on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, where users are accusing the assignment of being one-sided and antisemitic.
Huynh is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ethnic Studies, according to the university's website. She did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
According to the screenshot, the email tells students they can get extra credit if they "attend the national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza" or if they "watch a short documentary on Palestine and call/email your local California representative," according to the posted screenshots.
Doing one of these things, the email says, "will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade."
The email may have been referring to a planned walkout by students in many US universities calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and for the universities to cut their ties with arms manufacturers that make weapons used by Israel.
As for the option to contact local representatives, the email directed students to a Linktree, but it is not clear what was located at the Linktree, which is a service used to present people with links to multiple websites. It is also not clear what documentary students were invited to watch.
The email said that students who took up the offer should inform her which option they choose and "send a screenshot/photo with proof of their participation."
A representative for UC Berkeley did not directly confirm the legitimacy of the email screenshots but did say in an email to Insider, "As soon as the administration was made aware of the assignment it moved quickly to ensure that it would be changed."
The representative added that the situation has been "remedied," and students now have multiple options for extra credit.
"Students can now attend any local event they wish — such as a book talk or a panel discussion — related to the course's subject, including the protest…or they can watch any documentary they wish about the Middle East," the representative said.
The escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas escalated earlier this month when Hamas launched a deadly attack that Israel said killed at least 1,400 people and saw nearly 200 people taken hostage.
In response, Israel launched a "complete siege" of the occupied territory of Gaza, denying the entry of food, water, and fuel. Israel also told people in the densely populated enclave to move to its south and started bombing the strip. The United Nations said on Tuesday that 5,791 people were confirmed killed in Israel's response, with more than 1,500 more missing.
This has sparked international protests both in support of the Palestinian people and of Israel, as well as a rise in antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate crimes in many countries.
The disagreements resulting from the longstanding conflict and the two sides' actions over recent weeks have been particularly prevalent on college campuses.
Since the recent conflict began, big donors at Ivy League colleges have said they will cut or stop donations over the institutes' responses to the war, and a law firm rescinded job offers to three students from Harvard University and Columbia University after they were accused of being in student organizations whose position on the war went against the firm's values.