{"id":704407,"date":"2026-06-14T23:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/704407\/"},"modified":"2026-06-14T23:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T23:29:09","slug":"around-200-stanford-students-walk-out-as-google-ceo-takes-stage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/704407\/","title":{"rendered":"Around 200 Stanford students walk out as Google CEO takes stage"},"content":{"rendered":"

Though the booming technology may seem like a natural fit for graduates of the prestigious university located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Pichai instead spoke about his own life experience. Still, the soft-spoken<\/a> chief executive didn’t completely escape some backlash.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Around 200 students walked out as Pichai took the stage, and smaller groups in the audience waved banners, blew whistles and waved Palestinian flags before also leaving mid-speech. Pro-Palestianian protesters condemned the company\u2019s ties with the Israeli government, particularly its controversial $1.2 trillion cloud-computing deal<\/a> with the country in 2021, known as Project Nimbus<\/a>. The walkouts follow other Stanford commencements<\/a> over the last three years where students have demonstrated in response to Israel\u2019s war in Gaza and the university\u2019s crackdown<\/a> on pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus.<\/p>\n

For at least the second year in a row<\/a>, students walking out on\u00a0Pichai hosted their own \u201cPeople\u2019s Commencement.\u201d<\/a> This year\u2019s event featured activist Mahmoud Khalil<\/a> as its keynote speaker. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained Khalil for more than 100 days last year, threatening his deportation over his pro-Palestinian activism on Columbia University\u2019s campus in 2024.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the demonstrations quieted down, Pichai was largely well-received. Stories of his own failures and triumphs from his earlier years, like immigrating to California, dropping his doctorate in favor of a master’s degree, and struggles when he started at Google were greeted with scattered laughter and applause.<\/p>\n

One of Pichai\u2019s predecessors, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, wasn\u2019t received as warmly when he spoke at the University of Arizona commencement last month. Graduates booed<\/a> when Schmidt said that \u201cAI is going to touch everything,\u201d even “if you don’t care about science.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a recent New York Times \u201cHard Fork\u201d appearance, interviewers asked Pichai what his \u201cboo strategy\u201d would be in light of Schmidt\u2019s snafu. But Pichai took themes of technological advancement in a different route, focusing more broadly on accessibility, including an anecdote about rural women in India using smartphones to learn new trades.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSeeing computing change people\u2019s lives as it had changed mine was the most exciting thing in the world to me,\u201d Pichai said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Though the booming technology may seem like a natural fit for graduates of the prestigious university located in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":704408,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,243150,245396,74],"class_list":["post-704407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-sfgnews","tag-sfgtech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704407"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704407\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/704408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}