Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai addresses graduates at Stanford University’s commencement ceremony on June 14, 2026. Photo by Andrew Brodhead/Stanford University
Wacky walks, customized gowns and euphoric cheers marked Stanford University’s commencement ceremony on Sunday, where more than 5,000 graduates marked major life milestones and where attendees had a chance to hear from two speakers, both immigrants, who in many ways epitomize the current moment in America’s history.
One was Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, AI enthusiast and prominent member of the tech elite class who had front row seats at President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. The other was Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and pro-Palestinian activist who last year became the face of Trump’s deportation effort when he was forced to spend 104 days at an ICE detention center in Louisiana.
Pichai took the stage at Stanford’s formal ceremony, where he delivered the keynote address and urged graduates to remain optimistic, pursue ambitious challenges and embrace their passions. The other spoke at the “People’s Commencement,” a smaller student-led ceremony where speakers urged hundreds of attendees to follow their convictions and to speak out in the face of injustice.
Graduates play with bubbles at Stanford University’s commencement ceremony on June 14, 2026. Photo by Andrew Brodhead/Stanford University
The two ceremonies highlighted the two sides of Stanford, which is both an engine of technological innovation and a scene of heated debates over social justice, whether domestically or in Gaza and West Bank. On the main stage, the Google CEO offered graduates a sunny message about following their dreams. On the smaller stage, a banner with the words “ICE Spies with Google AI” flapped in the wind.
The events also reflected two different views of Stanford. For Pichai, the university represented an entry into the technology world where he now occupies a critical role. He said that before he came to Stanford, he didn’t have much access to computers. He was elated to arrive at the university and see “rows and rows of computers that I can use any time I want.”
President Jonathan Levin similarly spoke in glowing terms about the role of Stanford, where the campus has felt “open and expansive, an environment of discovery and collisions and new perspectives.”
“Universities are designed to bring together people with a vast array of expertise and different ways of looking at, and thinking about the world,” Levin said. “This is the great power of the university.”
Despite his status as one of the major players in the quickly expanding field of artificial intelligence, Pichai steered largely clear of mentioning the topic, aside from a quip about his own name containing the initials AI. Perhaps mindful of the strong – and mostly negative – reaction that other AI evangelists have received in recent commencement ceremonies, the Google CEO talked about his upbringing in Chennai, India, his arrival to the United States in the early-Internet days of 1990s and the positive impact that technology has had on his family.
Pichai offered a simple message to the graduates: stay optimistic. He told a story about the day he arrived at California, where he expected to see lush forests but was instead confronted with a brown landscape. His host at the time said that they prefer to see it as “golden,” a shift in perspective from which Pinchai drew inspiration.
Graduates cheer during Stanford University’s commencement ceremony on June 14, 2026. Photo by Andrew Brodhead/Stanford University
“The world is going through a lot – global conflicts, economic anxiety, a rewiring of technology, information overload, and all at a past pace,” Pinchai said. “It’s easy to look at the news of the day and think we’re living in uniquely challenging times.
“For me, it’s helpful to remember that each generation faced hardships in its own ways. We don’t get to choose the world we graduate into, but we do get to choose how we frame our circumstances.”
He also urged the graduates to gravitate toward difficult projects. He recalled his own journey at Google, including his experience on the small team that developed the Chrome browser.
“Working on hard things taught me a lot,” he said. “It typically attracts other great and optimistic people, and even if you miss meeting the high goals you set, you will still achieve something great.
“So, if you have a choice to work on something hard, say yes.”
As per tradition, the Stanford commencement featured plenty of signs, props and goofy outfits. Some graduates held up enlarged ID cards with their future occupations while others wore Storm Trooper helmets, Lucha libre masks or inflatable rubber ducks around their cardinal-red sashes.
But if the formal ceremony was intentionally goofy, the informal one near the corner of El Camino Real and Galvez Street was purposefully somber. Hundreds of visitors, many still wearing their caps and gowns, came to the “People’s Commencement,” where the lectern was decorated with a Palestinian flag, where proceedings kicked off with an acknowledgement that the university sits on the ancestral Muwekma Ohlone land, and where speakers offered somewhat less sanguine views on university culture.
Mahmoud Khalil addresses a crowd of graduates at “The People’s Commencement” ceremony on June 14, 2026. Photo by Gennady Sheyner
Here, visitors heard from Dr. Mohammed Subeh, an emergency physician who recalled his harrowing trip to treat patients in Gaza, and from Eva Jones, a Stanford teaching assistant who leads a group called Tech for Liberation, which opposes the deployment of emergent technology for surveillance and military use.
Subeh recalled the persistent sound of drones, any of which could drop a bomb at any time. He was told they were precise, AI-guided weapons, but this was “far from reality.” He recalled “bunker buster” bombs that destroyed a nearby tent encampments; mule-drawn carriages bringing in Palestinian bodies; and children with gruesome injuries.
Mohammed Subeh addresses the crowd at “The People’s Commencement” on June 14, 2026. Photo by Gennady Sheyner
In recent years, the society has witnessed “moving goalposts of what atrocities are now acceptable,” said Subeh. Residents routinely turn a blind eye to injustice.
“Today, it’s important to realize that you’re not defined by your Stanford pedigree, or the job you hold, or the family you come from, or how much money you have in your bank account,” he said. “You’re defined by your principles, and the clarity and conviction with which you stand up against oppression, injustice, dehumanization – especially when it’s uncomfortable, difficult and risk-laden.”
Few epitomize the risks of speaking out more than Mahmoud Khalil, who was targeted for deportation by the Trump administration and who remains in legal limbo. Even though a district judge freed him from detention last year, an appeals court in January reversed that ruling.
Khalil said that he had once believed that universities were “places where difficult conversations can happen — places where truth mattered, places where conscience mattered.”
“But how I was wrong,” Khalil said. “I learned in these three years that those values are often celebrated in theory and punished in practice, especially when it comes to Palestine.”
Khalil graduated from Columbia University last year but did not attend his commencement ceremony because he was detained by ICE. As his classmates walked across the stage, he was behind bars, on a bunk in an ICE detention center, he said.
“It’s because my alma mater, Columbia University, the same as most universities, as your university as well, chose to throw their students, faculty, communities under the bus,” Khalil said, prompting a “Shame” chant from the crowd.
Khalil linked his campaign to support of Palestine to prior efforts to advance civil rights, peace and labor rights. The movement to oppose Israel’s actions in Palestine has become so successful, he said, that the federal government began to target him.
“They had to bring the president of United States to crush this movement, and they did not succeed,” Khalil said.
Hundreds of people attended “The People’s Commencement” at Stanford on June 14, 2026. Photo by Gennady Sheyner
He criticized universities that punish students who speak out and called out Stanford Five, a group of students who are facing criminal charges for allegedly vandalizing a university office during a pro-Palestine protest in 2024. He also encouraged graduates not to listen to those who advise them to be patient, sit down and wait their turn.
History remembers the people who stood up, Khalil said, particularly when standing up came at a personal cost.
“The people who wrote history were never the people who adapted themselves to injustice — they were the people who challenged it,” Khalil said. “What good is the education if it teaches us how to succeed and not how to care? What good is knowledge if we lack the courage to act from it?”
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