UC Berkeley has scrubbed a course description from its website that praised authoritarian communist governments, including North Korea’s, and referred to Hamas as a “revolutionary resistance force.”
A spokesperson for the university said Monday that the course description was written by graduate students without the permission of the instructor overseeing the class, or of the department chair.
The description advertised a spring 2025 writing course for undergraduates in the comparative literature department called “Leninism and Anarchism: A Theoretical Approach to Literature and Film.”
An internet archive shows the original course description that was visible on Friday. By Sunday, the description had been removed, and on Monday the names of the grad students teaching the course were removed, too. The course remains one of 15 sections open to undergraduates taking “English Composition in Connection with the Reading of World Literature.” According to Cal’s website, the course will focus on “expository writing based on analysis of selected masterpieces of ancient and modern literature.”
Before it was edited, the course description promised to concentrate on current affairs, left-wing movements and what it called the “destructive imperial agenda” of the U.S. and Israel.
“With the US-backed and -funded genocide being carried out against Indigenous Palestinians by the Israeli Occupying Force, many have found it difficult to envision a reality beyond the one we are living in today,” the course description began, using a derogatory nickname for Israel’s military favored by anti-Zionists. “At the same time, we have also seen a rise in global socialist (and in particular Leninist) movements that are actively combating this destructive imperial agenda.”
Among the left-wing movements combating imperialism, according to the description, are the “Hamas revolutionary resistance forces,” as well as “Cuba, Vietnam, Venezuela, China,” and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or North Korea.
Hamas is an Islamist organization, long designated as a terrorist group by the U.S., that spearheaded the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel, the worst terrorist attack in the country’s history. Hamas killed 1,200 people, committing acts of “unspeakable” violence against civilians including sexual violence, according to United Nations representative Pramila Patten, and took more than 250 people as hostages that day. Of those, 101 people remain in captivity in Gaza.
“How do we learn from the revolutionary visions set out by those who have come before us, and those who will come after?” the course description stated, listing readings from authors including Assata Shakur, a former member of the far-left Black Liberation Army currently wanted by the FBI, as well as Mao Tse-Tung and Vladimir Lenin.
A screenshot of the course description circulated widely online, earning opprobrium from a number of pro-Israel social media accounts that seized on its lionization of Hamas as a movement that, in the words of the course description, had shown a “commitment to anti-imperialism and anti-capitalism.”
“Glorifying terror groups in higher education is an issue that has to be rooted out at its core,” Hen Mazzig, a social media influencer, pundit and opinion writer with a large following across the U.S. and Israel, wrote on X. “Berkeley must not only remove this course but apologize to its Jewish community.”
Mazzig’s post had been seen more than 130,000 times as of Monday and was only one of many others like it on X.
Like most highly ranked universities across the country, UC Berkeley has groaned under the weight of repeated controversies surrounding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that intensified since Oct. 7 of last year, but by no means began with the 2023 terrorist attack and the ensuing war in Gaza, which rages into its 14th month.
Berkeley made national headlines during fall 2022 after leaders of its law school affinity groups determined, in protest of Israel, that they would no longer host speakers who support Zionism. That news led to a bombshell op-ed by the pro-Israel lawyer Ken Marcus titled “Berkeley Develops Jewish-Free Zones” that was shared by Barbra Streisand and other celebrities. Some progressive Jewish groups took issue with Marcus’ claim as overstated clickbait.
Controversies of a similar sort have felt at times like a steady drumbeat at Cal, which has a long, storied history of left-wing activism and radical politics. In November 2023, undergraduates studying environmental science told a progressive Jewish politician they did not want him speaking to their class because, they said, he supported “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing.” During the spring semester, students erected a tent encampment on the central campus plaza which, in addition to voicing support for innocent Palestinian victims of the ongoing war, glorified Hamas with large banners and referred to Zionists as colonizers and white supremacists.
Cal is facing both a lawsuit in federal court and a U.S. Department of Education investigation into allegations of antisemitism and a hostile climate for Jewish students at the university.
In a statement Monday from Cal spokesperson Dan Mogulof, the university said that the comparative literature course description was “designed by graduate students” and posted without the knowledge or consent of the department. The “matter is under review,” the statement added. Both graduate students’ biographical pages on the comparative literature website were down Monday afternoon.
“The course description was published without adequate review and has been removed from campus webpages pending rigorous academic review,” read the statement from Mogulof. “The department will review its processes for publishing course descriptions as a result of this incident.”
According to UC Board of Regents policy, the university system must “remain aloof from politics and never function as an instrument for the advance of partisan interest.” The policy adds that the use of the classroom for “political indoctrination” constitutes “misuse of the University as an institution.”
The latest controversy comes amid intensifying scrutiny on free-speech issues at American universities accompanying the second and incoming administration of Donald Trump.
In a speech to donors in September, Trump said that his administration would take a hard look at U.S. universities for what he described as “antisemitic propaganda,” and he threatened to pull their accreditation or federal funding. Trump’s approach has worried free-speech advocates concerned about protecting academic freedom and the right to protest on campus.