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

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.