Protesters interrupted and shut down a Berkeley Forum and College of Engineering event featuring Google chief scientist and Gemini lead Jeff Dean this afternoon, criticizing the use of Gemini AI in the genocide in Gaza.<\/p>\n
Approximately 20 protesters marched over from the May Day rally held at noon in front of California Hall. After the rally concluded, a student organizer announced that a speaker from Google\u2019s Gemini AI was speaking at the Grimes Engineering Center and called on rally attendees to join him in disrupting the event, which had started at 1 p.m. The group of protesters headed over to Grimes and entered the event, held in the Eugene Jarvis Auditorium, at 1:37 p.m.<\/p>\n
One of the student protesters, a member of Students Organizing for Liberation at UC Berkeley, walked onto the stage with a megaphone and interrupted Dean\u2019s speech. The student led the other protesters, who lined up in the aisle of the event, in a chant of \u201cUC, UC, you can\u2019t hide, you are funding genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat do you say for your AI being used to kill Palestinians?\u201d the student asked Dean.<\/p>\n
Dean responded that he appreciated the students\u2019 message but was trying to deliver a \u201cscientific lecture.\u201d<\/p>\n
During a 10-minute back-and-forth between the protesters, event organizers and attendees, the audience largely expressed support for Dean, chanting his name and cheering when asked if they wanted to hear from him, and booed the protesters.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe decided to stop by and disrupt this event because we thought that it was important that students know that this is a man complicit in genocide,\u201d said a protester, who requested anonymity due to safety concerns. \u201cIt was really saddening to see basically the entire auditorium erupting in applause for this man, especially chanting his name.\u201d<\/p>\n
Organizers from the Berkeley Forum and the College of Engineering, as well as UCPD officers, repeatedly asked the protesters to leave the event. Electrical engineering and computer sciences department chair Jelani Nelson walked on stage to the microphone and offered to speak with the protesters outside the auditorium so the event could continue, but the protesters did not agree to Nelson\u2019s request.<\/p>\n
At approximately 1:47 p.m., event organizers announced that they were shutting down the event, and attendees and protesters left the room. A UCPD officer followed some of the protesters out of the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe honor the values of free speech that are ingrained in UC Berkeley\u2019s history and that are part of our community values,\u201d said Berkeley Engineering spokesperson Sarah Yang in a written statement. \u201cFree expression includes the right to protest. It does not include the right to silence others.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a written statement, the Berkeley Forum said it is a \u201cproponent of everyone\u2019s right to free speech\u201d but \u201cwish that a thoughtful discourse could have taken place.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe safety of our speakers and audience is always our highest priority, which is why we made the decision to cut the Jeff Dean event short,\u201d said the Berkeley Forum in a statement. \u201cHundreds of people chose to attend the event, and we are disappointed that they were unable to hear Mr. Dean speak.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sam Grotenstein and Sevag Halajian contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Protesters interrupted and shut down a Berkeley Forum and College of Engineering event featuring Google chief scientist and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":295896,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[125604,38336,40988,53777,125607,4004,125606,14624,113964,125605,48515,143,145,144,125608,30097,14759],"class_list":["post-295895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-berkeley-forum","tag-california-hall","tag-college-of-engineering","tag-electrical-engineering-and-computer-sciences","tag-eugene-jarvis-auditorium","tag-gaza","tag-gemini-ai","tag-google","tag-grimes-engineering-center","tag-jeff-dean","tag-jelani-nelson","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-sarah-yang","tag-students-organizing-for-liberation","tag-ucpd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=295895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/295895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/295896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=295895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=295895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=295895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}