The scene looked like a traditional university graduation day—a lectern and a microphone, white chairs with new Stanford graduates seated wearing their caps and gowns, food and bouquets on display, and a line-up of prominent commencement speakers.
What made this event different was its display of Palestinian flags and the presence of speakers—Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalll and Muhammed Subeh, an emergency room physician, among others.
Khalil, who became a symbol of Palestinian student activism following his arrest and detention in March 2025, was unable to take part in his own graduation during his incarceration. He urged the new graduates to speak out on injustice.
"The people who wrote history were never the people who adapted themselves to injustice—they were the people who challenged it," he told the audience.
"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?" he asked students, many of them still wearing their caps and gowns.
Just before their alternative event, around 100 graduates staged a walkout to protest Google CEO Sundar Pichai's commencement address.
Pichai has faced criticism for his role in Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract with Israel.
Some students held banners, wore keffiyehs and chanted "Free Palestine" as they walked out. Many pro-Palestinian student protesters have condemned Google's business ties with the Israeli government, particularly its use of artificial intelligence for surveillance and military targets.
The people’s commencement, organised by local activists, including Students for Justice in Palestine, has become an annual tradition over the past three years, as some students seek to highlight social justice leaders rather than business elites.
"The People’s Commencement is a tradition here at Stanford. This is the third commencement that we’ve organised, the first one being in 2023," Amanda Campos, a new Stanford graduate and an organiser of the event, told The New Arab . "It has been a space for people who refuse complicity and silence on human rights crimes being committed in Palestine, in Lebanon, in Iran, in the Congo, in the US."
She emphasised that in addition to its focus on human rights, the event was also a place for people to be in community.
Since the outbreak of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza in October 2023, graduation ceremonies across the US have increasingly become venues for students, speakers and other attendees to express their opposition to Israel's actions. In some cases, people have faced disciplinary action from their university for invoking Palestine .
Being in Silicon Valley has given some advocates a stronger sense of determination and duty to address the tech industry’s role in war and government surveillance.
"What is harmful is the tech warfare AI pipeline Stanford has cultivated. It has automated and made a genocidal machine even worse," Campos said. On the other hand, she noted, "Tech can also be a tool for liberation."
Nur Iren, an organiser with No Tech for Apartheid, an international group of tech workers advocating against big tech’s contracts with the Israeli military, told TNA ,
"We're here to give the students a commencement they deserve and one that actually honours the four years they have spent here," she said. "The idea here is also that this is the future workforce. The company is at risk of losing their future employees."
As the event wrapped up, students took bouquets and ate hummus and baklava, and gathered to talk with Khalil and other speakers as they marked their new chapter with a different kind of graduation ceremony.