‘It’s a Modern-Day Draft’: Why Stanford Students Walked Out on Sundar Pichai’s Commencement Speech

Are the kids all right? The answer to that question probably depends on your criteria. At the very least, I can tell you that some of them are most definitely very mad.

The anger percolating among America’s youth was on display this graduation season, as college students across the country booed and jeered several high-profile commencement speakers who dared discuss—let alone extol the benefits of—artificial intelligence. While AI use among college kids is widespread, so too is the fear and mistrust about what the technology might mean for the future. A recent Gallup poll found that Gen Z sentiment toward AI has significantly declined, with only 22 percent of respondents expressing excitement about the tech—and anxiety around AI affecting 42 percent of them.

Among the commencement speech chaos, though, one school stood out to me: Stanford University. The California-based institution, long a key hub for Silicon Valley recruiting and a pipeline into elite tech gigs, this year saw more than a hundred students walk out of Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s remarks to graduates. Ironically, Pichai didn’t explicitly mention AI in his address at all. But for the organizers of the Stanford walkout, AI is only a tangential concern: More than any specific technology, their demonstration was designed to raise awareness of Google’s contracts with the US and Israeli governments, as well as ICE.

The walkout organizers may not have convinced Google to change its ways, but they did manage to create an international news event. Media outlets including CNN and the BBC ran with the story, and videos of the walkout have amassed millions of views online. I wanted to know more about how the coordinated effort came to be, what student organizers hoped to accomplish, and how it feels to be newly graduating—from a school as Silicon Valley–aligned as Stanford, no less—into a world that’s now arguably run by Big Tech.

Two of the Stanford walkout organizers, Eva Jones and Amanda Campos, traveled to New York and sat down with me in person earlier this month. Our conversation is below.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

KATIE DRUMMOND: Eva Jones and Amanda Campos—welcome, both of you.

AMANDA CAMPOS: Thank you so much, Katie. Thank you for having us.

I'm delighted that you're here. Thank you for making the trip. First of all, congratulations on graduating. What did you study in school? Why did you choose Stanford four years ago when you were thinking about where to go to undergrad?

Campos: I studied environmental policy at Stanford, and I am currently working in the environmental justice activism and advocacy space in California.

I quite literally came to Stanford because I knew I wanted to take action, to solve the environmental crisis. I grew up in Brazil, and since I was little it was the huge issue I saw as being able to take action towards.

But arriving at Stanford, I quickly realized [the school] just had so much fossil fuel money and bias, and I quickly became an organizer as a result. As a sophomore, when October 2023 came, I quite quickly realized how intertwined the environmental justice movement and the movement for Palestinian liberation are.

It goes back to the corporate ties Stanford has, and choosing a Google CEO is indicative of such a tie and of such a bias, really. I was a lead organizer with Stanford SJP, Students for Justice in Palestine, and as soon as we heard about Sundar Pichai being chosen as the commencement speaker, we knew we had to do something.

Eva, what about you? What did you go to Stanford to study?

EVA JONES: I am a recent graduate, having studied hydrology and water resources for my master’s degree, but I also did my bachelor’s programs there, in feminist philosophy and in freshwater engineering.

I came to Stanford five years ago now, from a rural town in Oregon, because I truly believed that a place like Stanford was looking to pool together minds and resources to tackle these existential threats to humanity, to build the kind of world that I always envisioned could be possible, one of connection, one of belonging.

I'm curious, Amanda, you talked about how you got involved with student organizing to begin with, but I'd love to hear from both of you a little bit more about that. How did you go from student to campus activist and organizer?

Jones: I came to Stanford as a student organizer. I was of the generation of students who were part of climate justice organizing, anti-gun-violence things, people who came into university ready to use their voice, thinking of that as a way to build a future.

As soon as I got to Stanford, I got involved in anti-sexual violence organizing, which quickly put me in opposition with the administration.

By 2023, when the student encampments in solidarity with Palestine began, that was something that we saw so many more students get involved in and really come together to build something more than just opposition. It was a really beautiful moment where we got to define why we came to university for ourselves, why we came seeking an education, and what we wanted to make of that.

Campos: I'll say that, differently from Eva, I definitely did not come to Stanford as a student organizer, but I very quickly became one because it was needed.

But more broadly, I did come in also a bit naive in terms of thinking about Stanford as this place where I can innovate on environmental solutions, where I can help people.

I saw the power of education, the power of a Stanford degree as a way to do that. But I think my view of power has definitely changed, especially through organizing. I viewed power as something to gain, and now I view it as something to build, as something that we all have through our voices.

Getting involved in SJP organizing, for me, has been extremely liberating. I have a lot of hope in the student movement.

Theo Baker has a new book out, I don't know if either of you have read it, called How to Rule the World. It describes Stanford as basically what you are both saying, a funnel into tech jobs and Silicon Valley, a place with a lot of clubbiness, tech elitism, VCs scouting for talent, and plenty of ethical lapses on the part of students and faculty and administration. Do you have any reactions to that book?

Jones: I have concerns about someone looking to define their career by participating in the rabid consumption of the American cultural fascination with what’s going on at elite universities. I think it really distracts from the actual issues going on, which are, in many ways, defense-propelled career pipelines at these universities and in Silicon Valley, at these companies that run deep and fuel really violent technologies and systems of control.

I would invite anybody who is interested in Theo Baker’s book to take it a step further and become a part of a movement to counter this obsession with elitism, tech optimism, and become a part of the solution of what that means, which is participating in anti-war, in anti-data-center advocacy, in the student movement that's demanding a better future for ourselves, for the laborers across the world.

This is a global movement against the extraction and disposability of our earth and our people. I would ask everyone to look beyond the fascination with the confines of what is basically a country club for 20-year-olds seeking fame to become a part of that global mission.

It sounds like you’re saying it’s one thing to write a titillating book—I have not finished the whole book, but I imagine it would fall under that category—as opposed to rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty in the actual work.

Jones: Yeah, and I will invite Theo Baker to participate in that. I think that if people want to be a part of opposing these elite circles that seem to control everything from our politics to our educations, they should get involved, they should get organized, instead of