TOI correspondent from Washington: When Sundar Pichai was studying at Stanford in the 1990s, he once skipped class to go to Las Vegas. When he returned to Stanford to deliver the commencement address on Sunday, some students skipped Sundar Pichai.It was a very Silicon Valley graduation ceremony: the CEO of Google, one of the most powerful companies on Earth, addressing some of the brightest young minds in America — only to discover that some had clicked “unsubscribe.”As Pichai took the stage, an estimated 100 to 200 graduates stood up and marched out, chanting “Free, free Palestine.” Some carried signs reading “ICE spies with Google AI” and others waved Palestinian flags. There were whistles, boos and cries of “Shame on you” because nothing says “Congratulations, Class of 2026” like heckling the man whose company probably processed the email invitations and streamed the protest. Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine and No Tech for Apartheid, the protests targeted the Silicon Valley giant’s contracts with the Israeli government, with the new grads reportedly incensed by Project Nimbus, Google’s $1.2 billion cloud-computing partnership with Israel, as well as alleged uses of AI for surveillance and immigration enforcement. Commencement speakers this year have discovered that mentioning AI before a graduating class can produce reactions usually associated with airline baggage fees. Last month, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt learned this lesson at the University of Arizona, where graduates booed after he declared that “AI is going to touch everything.”Pichai, clearly having updated his software, avoided the subject almost entirely. Instead, he offered a garden variety commencement speech with stories of setbacks, detours and self-discovery. He spoke of arriving in California from India and wondering what everyone found appealing about a landscape that appeared, to him, suspiciously brown. He recalled abandoning plans for a PhD and the uncertainty of his early years at Google.And then came the revelation that instantly made him the coolest Indian uncle in Silicon Valley. As a Stanford student, Pichai confessed, he once played hooky to visit Sin City. “This is the first time my parents are hearing about this,” he said, amid laughter.But the dissenters had already moved on. For the second consecutive year, protesting students hosted their own “People’s Commencement,” complete with an alternative keynote speaker. This year’s featured guest was activist Mahmoud Khalil, who became nationally known after being detained by immigration authorities over his pro-Palestinian activism.Not everyone admired the extracurricular scheduling though. Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, also a Stanford alum, blasted the protesters as “biased, idiotic, short-sighted and very selfish.” He argued that AI represented humanity’s greatest opportunity to improve the lives of billions of people and accused students of focusing narrowly on their own concerns.But the walkout underscored an increasingly awkward reality for Silicon Valley titans. The industry’s leaders once visited elite campuses as conquering heroes — technological rock stars dispensing wisdom to adoring students eager to become the next Mark Zuckerberg. Now they arrive as complicated and controversial figures: admired for innovation, scrutinized for their companies’ influence, and occasionally treated like villains at their own fan conventions.
