EXCLUSIVE — Top diversity, equity, and inclusion staffers at the University of Virginia appeared to immediately downplay outside concerns over a professor offering students extra credit to attend a rally about “how we can stand in solidarity with Palestinians resisting occupation,” emails show.

The emails were obtained by the Washington Examiner through the Freedom of Information Act and have not yet been reported. They provide an inside look at how officials at one of the top-ranking universities in the United States scrambled to determine how to respond to scrutiny in connection to UVA global studies and anthropology professor Tessa Farmer’s heavily scrutinized extra credit offer last year to students on Oct. 12, just five days after Hamas killed more than 1,200 Israelis in the Jewish state. In turn, two senior DEI employees at UVA seemed to dispute whether Farmer was actually providing that extra credit opportunity, which the office of Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said he was “very concerned” about, documents show.