Pro-Palestinian Protesters Disrupt Sundar Pichai at Stanford Commencement

Google CEO Sundar Pichai was greeted by a loud pro-Palestinian protest on Sunday at Stanford University’s annual commencement, where he was the main speaker. About 200 students stood up, waved signs and Palestinian flags, booed, and then walked out as he took the stage.

The demonstrators condemned Google’s ties to the Israeli government, especially the Nimbus cloud-computing project, and accused Stanford of suppressing pro-Palestinian campus protests. They then held an alternative ceremony that featured Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who had previously been arrested in connection with protest activity he organized at Columbia University in 2024.

The disruption marked the third straight year that pro-Palestinian protests have interrupted Stanford graduation events. After the walkout, Pichai, whose parents and relatives were in the audience, delivered what the report described as a personal, moving and humorous speech, without mentioning artificial intelligence at all.

Pichai focused instead on his journey from Chennai, India, to Silicon Valley, describing childhood hardships, his family’s wait for basic technologies like a phone, television and refrigerator, and his decision to leave a doctoral path and pursue a career at Google. He said his parents never let limits restrain his imagination and credited technology with changing his life.

He also offered graduates three “non-technical” pieces of advice, choose optimism, work on hard things, and do what excites you. He illustrated the first with a story about a California family calling a brown hillside “gold,” saying the shift in perspective changed how he viewed the world.