Sundar Pichai Faces Walkout By Stanford Graduates At Commencement

India-West News Desk

STANFORD, CA – Roughly 200 graduates walked out of Stanford University’s commencement ceremony on June 14 while Google CEO Sundar Pichai was on stage. The demonstrators, organized by groups including ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ and ‘No Tech for Apartheid’, were protesting Google’s $1.2 billion cloud-computing partnership with the Israeli government, known as “Project Nimbus.”

As the speech began, students stood up and left the venue while chanting “Free, free Palestine.” They carried signs alleging that Google uses AI for surveillance and immigration enforcement. 

Vinod Khosla, a venture capitalist and fellow Stanford graduate, took to social media to call the protesters “biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish.” He defended the industry, arguing that AI is one of humanity’s best tools for improving lives on a global scale.

Pichai, who studied at Stanford in the 1990s after moving to California from India, kept his address focused on personal history. He told stories about his early career struggles and the uncertainty he felt when he first arrived in the U.S. He also shared a lighthearted secret from his college years: he once skipped class to take a trip to Las Vegas. “This is the first time my parents are hearing about this,” he joked to the audience.

Once the official ceremony ended, the protesting students moved to their own event, which they called the “People’s Commencement.” Their keynote speaker was Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who became well-known following his detention by immigration authorities during pro-Palestinian demonstrations.