Hundreds of Stanford University students walked out of their commencement ceremony on Sunday in protest of their speaker, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai. The protest was likely against Google’s involvement in ‘Project Nimbus,’ a $1.2 billion joint cloud contract with Amazon connected with the Israeli government.

Protest Details

According to local reports, around 200 students walked out as soon as Pichai took the stage, before he even began to speak. During the walkout, some students were seen holding Palestinian flags. Despite the protest, Pichai’s speech largely avoided political issues such as international wars or artificial intelligence.

Pichai focused on the importance of optimism, stating that each generation has faced hardship in their own way. He emphasized that graduates don’t get to choose the world they graduate into, but they do get to choose how they frame their circumstances.

This is not the first time Stanford University has seen protests during commencement speeches. Last year, graduates walked out during commencement speaker Katie Ledecky’s speech to protest the school’s alleged ‘complicity’ in Israel’s war against Gaza.

Original reporting: Fox News (HLL/CB) — read the source article.