Overview
- A group of graduates staged a coordinated walkout and chanted “Free, free Palestine” as Sundar Pichai began his keynote at Stanford Stadium, with videos of the moment spreading widely on social media.
- Organizers including Stanford Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid had announced the protest in advance and many participants later attended a separate “People’s Commencement” that featured activist Mahmoud Khalil.
- Reports vary on the size of the demonstration, with outlets citing figures from more than 100 up to around 200 or “hundreds,” while Stanford said the ceremony drew more than 20,000 attendees and about 3,600 graduating students.
- Pichai continued his remarks without addressing the protest, largely avoided discussing artificial intelligence, and declined to comment when a BBC reporter asked him as he left the stadium.
- The action focused on Project Nimbus, a reported $1.2 billion cloud and AI contract held by Google and Amazon with the Israeli government, a contract that critics say could aid surveillance or military operations and that Google says provides standard government cloud services.