A commencement speech from another industry titan has been met with disapproval from graduates. Google is, once again, the company associated with the speaker, but this time the problem is not AI itself, but the company’s involvement in Israel.
According to Information’s Erin Woo, a speech by Google CEO Sundar Pichai was protested in the form of a strike, along with chants of “Free, free Palestine” and “Shame on you.”
More than 100 Stanford students walked out of Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s commencement speech at Stanford just now, chanting “Free, free Palestine.” Google has a cloud contract with the Israeli government. Lots of boos and cries of “what a shame” too. pic.twitter.com/2dIqs1SBvi
—Erin Woo (@erinkwoo) June 14, 2026
In a video of the ceremony, Pichai continues his speech as dozens (“more than 100,” by Woo’s count) of graduates march toward the exit. That part of the speech does not seem to touch on any sensitive or controversial material, giving the impression that it was not spontaneous. In fact, jfrom a transcript of the speechIt seems that Pichai had just started speaking.
Google and Amazon have a joint contract called “Nimbus Project” with the Israeli military and government. The contract is reported to be worth $1.2 billion, or 4 billion shekels according to Israel—and provides Israel with cloud computing, advanced artificial intelligence and more. Reports on the actual details of Project Nimbus largely come from leaks. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has criticized the companies for their alleged lack of transparency around the Nimbus Project.
One of Pichai’s predecessors, Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was loudly booed during his commencement speech at a University of Arizona graduation ceremony about a month ago. The boos came when Schmidt brought up the topic of AI, and at the time I wrote that Schmidt hadn’t read the room. That appears to have been the case, but later reports made it clear that some of the booing was probably premeditated. Schmidt was already a controversial speaker due to his possible links to Jeffrey Epsteinand part of the disturbance reportedly The graduates involved were shouting “Epstein Files! Epstein Files!”
In at least one photoStanford graduates held painted signs. One of them refers to ICE. In February, 900 Google employees called for transparency about Google’s ties to the federal government over concerns that its technology was complicit in the Trump Administration’s immigration crackdown.
Booing graduation speakers has attracted a lot of media attention this graduation season. real estate executive Gloria Caulfield and music executive Scott Borchetta They were also booed this year, but in those cases, the crowd’s hostility was clearly a reaction to their defenses of the AI.
