An ethnic studies instructor at UC Berkeley is revealed to have offered her students extra credit to attend a campus walkout protest for Gaza co-organized by a group that expresses support for Hamas’ atrocities in Israel.
This report has been updated.
An ethnic studies instructor at UC Berkeley is revealed to have offered her students extra credit to attend a campus walkout protest for Gaza co-organized by a group that expresses support for Hamas and their atrocities on civilians in Israel.
Victoria Huynh, an ethnic studies Ph.D. student who teaches Asian American studies courses to undergraduates, sent an email to her students on Oct. 24 about the extra credit opportunity. Students could attend the “national student walkout tomorrow against the settler-colonial occupation of Gaza” or watch a film about Palestine coupled with calling a California lawmaker to pressure them over Israel.
“Doing so will either count as a field trip or an extra 5 points on the field trip category of your grade,” Huynh wrote. “We’ll spend some time today talking about Palestinian history in relation to class concepts like colonialism, imperialism, and Third World solidarity.” She asked for protest attendees to send photographic “proof of their participation.”
Victoria Huynh sent this email to her undergraduate students at UC Berkeley
The email sent to students in the “Asian American Communities and Race Relations” online course included a digital flyer of the protest, scheduled for Oct. 25 in Sproul Plaza. The photo on the flyer was taken of a Palestinian rioter hurling a rock at Israeli border guards. Huynh also directed students taking a different section of the same course to contact her colleague Derek Wu for extra credit validation.
Ethnic studies Ph.D. student and instructor Victoria Huynh
The walkout protest was co-organized by Bears for Palestine, the UC Berkeley chapter name for Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). The SJP is an extremist organization that expresses support for the Hamas atrocities in Israel. The group was revealed to have sent out a “day of resistance” toolkit to students urging them to support Hamas in Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the name of the Hamas operation resulting in atrocities on civilians in Israel.
Bears for Palestine is the official UC Berkeley chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine group, an extremist organization
The toolkit reads: “Referred to as Operation Towfan Al-Aqsa (Al-Aqsa Flood), the resistance has taken occupation soldiers hostage, fired thousands of rockets, taken over Israeli military vehicles, and gained control over illegal Israeli settlements.…We must act as part of this movement. All of our efforts continue the work and resistance of Palestinians on the ground.”
The UC Berkeley chapter of SJP released a solidarity statement for Hamas as the atrocities were being committed.
“We display our unwavering support of the resistance in Gaza and the broader occupied Palestinian lands,” Bears for Palestine wrote on Oct. 7.
The UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine released a statement supporting Hamas atrocities in Israel
On Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida announced that in consultation with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, local campus chapters of SJP would be deactivated for violating state law banning providing material support to foreign terrorist groups.
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View on XDespite being the daughter of Vietnamese refugees of communism, Huynh’s academic, professional and activist careers are in radical revolutionary leftist politics. She is a prison abolitionist, a militant view among the far-left that the American criminal justice system must be abolished. It was mainstreamed in part by Black Lives Matter, whose chapters also expressed support for Hamas. Advocates of prison abolitionism express support for Palestinian terrorism in the name of “resisting white supremacist settler-colonialism.”
Victoria Huynh has a long history of radical far-left politics
It is unclear when Huynh became radicalized but she has an undergraduate degree in ethnic studies from Brown University. An archive of her website states that she is a “social justice educator” and a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) consultant with ModelExpand. Huynh has also contributed as a writer to Teen Vogue, a magazine criticized by conservatives for publishing far-left extremist essays aimed at radicalizing youth.
Huynh was reached for comment, as was her colleague Derek Wu and UC Berkeley. None responded by time of publication. (Huynh locked down her X account and the university removed public access to her academic profile page.)
Update: UC Berkeley sent a statement to some media outlets saying the "assignment has been changed and there are now a number of options for extra credit, not just one." The university also sent out an email to faculty, staff and students reminding them of a policy prohibiting "canceling a class session for the purpose of encouraging students to participate in a protest or rally."
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Huynh’s controversial plan to give extra credit to students to participate in protest and campaigning is mirrored by UCLA instructors who also similarly offered credit to students for attending anti-Israel events.
Dozens of American academics within ethnic studies and its related disciplines have been exposed in recent weeks for expressing support for Hamas’ terrorism in Israel since Oct. 7, leading to crises and scandals at some elite institutions as pro-Israel donors say they will no longer donate.