Sundar Pichai faces boos and walkouts at Stanford University graduation ceremony over Google’s ties to Israel and ICE

Over the weekend, Google CEO Sundar Pichai encountered a mini-revolution when he delivered his commencement speech at Stanford University, where he earned a graduate degree in materials science and engineering. About 200 students from the graduating class It is said He walked away, while others loudly booed the tech executive.

The focus of the protest was Google’s defense ties — including Project Nimbus, the controversial $1.2 billion contract, shared with Amazon, to provide cloud and artificial intelligence services to the Israeli military, as well as… Her relationship With US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The students’ signs included phrases such as “ICE SPIES WITH GOOGLE AI” and “GENOCIDE IS GOING ON GOOGLE,” as well as “FREE FREE PALESTINE,” a press release linked to the protest notes. The students also waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “Free Palestine.” Online video From the protest shows.

“We are withdrawing because we refuse to glorify the corporations that fuel this violence and we exercise our power of choice differently,” a statement linked to the protest said.

The strike was organized by a number of activist groups on campus, including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine, No Tech for Apartheid, and Tech for Liberation. TechCrunch has reached out to Google for comment.

As the war in Gaza raged, Google’s participation in Nimbus sparked protests from both sides inside And outside the company. Google in 2024 28 workers were fired To protest the contract, although he continued to do so Suffering from internal opposition On this issue ever since. It was also recently criticized by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Who accused him And other companies “choose to look the other way” on Israel’s use of their services.

The Nimbus project also has support from Amazon. Microsoft has also been criticized for its support of the Israeli army, although the company It restricted the use of the Israeli government From its technology yet Investigation It found that its cloud services were being used to conduct a mass survey of Palestinians.

The student protest also drew criticism from online business leaders. Vinod Khosla, billionaire co-founder of Sun Microsystems and one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists, Published on X that the protest was “biased, stupid, short-sighted and extremely selfish,” adding that it was selfish because the students “ignored the bottom 3 billion people on the planet who could benefit from AI, and are concerned about their own misguided selfish interest.”

Pichai’s emergence at Stanford is part of a broader pattern. Speakers at college graduation ceremonies across the country I faced booing When they tried to interest outgoing college students about artificial intelligence. But student hostility has rarely been as targeted as it was with Pichai, and directed not at the AI ​​hype, but rather at the specific business decisions being made by the company he leads. In general, young people seem to think that AI is just that Threatening their jobs Opportunities and perhaps destroy other parts of society as well.