By Luis Melecio-Zambrano
Publication Date: 2026-06-14 22:40:00
As Google CEO Sundar Pichai took the stage Sunday at Stanford’s commencement, scores of graduates stood, booed and walked out, turning a celebration for nearly 6,000 degree recipients into a protest over the tech giant’s work with Israel.
Pichai, a Stanford alumnus leading one of the world’s most powerful companies, appeared unfazed. His speech largely avoided the artificial intelligence debate that has shadowed other tech-heavy commencement addresses this season, instead offering graduates a familiar message about optimism, hard choices and pursuing work that excites them.
Sunday morning began as a typical Stanford celebration, with thousands of onlookers braving the late spring sun beneath a cloudless sky. Graduates walked in riding inflatable horses, wearing cardboard mock-ups of Lightning McQueen and Caltrain or, in the case of a few male graduates, only Stanford-red briefs and sunglasses beneath their graduation gowns.
It was all part of Wacky Walk, the decades-long…
