More than a dozen students protested outside the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library Wednesday to demand San José State cut ties with companies that supply the United States and Israel with technologies used for military purposes in the Middle East.
The protesters, most of whom were members of SJSU’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), criticized the university’s partnership with NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google and Lockheed Martin – companies they described as “war profiteers” – in providing workforce trainings and career fairs at SJSU.
The Earth Day protest came after the recent opening of the AI Center for Civic and Social Good, a collaboration between the City of San José and SJSU to expand the public’s access to artificial intelligence tools and encourage AI applications that, “advance civic engagement … and responsible innovation,” according to its website.
John Duroyan, a history graduate student and president of SDS, said the protest was meant to draw attention not only to AI’s role in causing humanitarian crises, but environmental degradation, too.
“We know that the U.S. military is one of the biggest polluters in the world,” Duroyan said. “No one has done more damage to the world than the U.S. military.”
Protesters pointed out the rapidly growing energy demands of AI data centers and the localized environmental costs – air pollution, strained water resources and hazardous wastes – incurred by the communities they are built near.
San José has about 20 data centers and more potentially on the way, with city officials pushing to capitalize on the new revenue – up to $7 million in annual utility and property taxes per project – they could bring, according to an April 23 article by San José Spotlight.
Lilith Kelly, a first-year applied mathematics student and SDS member, said student sentiment toward the center on social media has been largely disapproving.
“If you look at the comments when (SJSU President Cynthia Teniente-Matson) put together that AI Center for Civic and Social Good, you’ll notice that it’s a lot of students who said, ‘Hey, we don’t like this. We didn’t ask for this.’ ” Kelly said. “Especially since that money could be spent toward other things like our parking issue or our housing issue.”
She said the president’s recent salary increase was another indication that SJSU didn’t prioritize students’ needs.
Teniente-Matson received a base salary of $546,066 for the 2025-26 fiscal year, about a 15% increase from the previous year, according to data from Transparent California, a public pension database.
“It’s clear that she doesn’t want this money to go toward student needs and would rather help war profiteers and help herself,” Kelly said.
The Office of the President’s AI Vision Statement sets forth a vision in which SJSU continues “providing the talent needed to maintain Silicon Valley’s leading edge,” while being “propelled by a vision of ethical, inclusive, and responsible scholarship.”
The statement poses guiding questions for ethical AI use at SJSU, including how to protect intellectual property and creative works, reduce bias and preserve “innate human skills.”
Ethan Maruyama, a fourth-year kinesiology student and SDS member, said he thinks the AI Center merely “pretends to be for social good,” while “upholding evil” in practice.
“Instead of listening to the students, SJSU (administrators) doubled down on their efforts to be friends with the war machine,” Maruyama said. “In opening the center, they invited OpenAI, NVIDIA and Google to SJSU so that your money can be used for slaughter by the U.S. military and the (Israel Defense Forces).”
Last summer, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded OpenAI a $200 million contract to use its AI systems to “address critical national security challenges in both warfighting and enterprise domains,” according to a June 16, 2025 article by CNBC.
NVIDIA and Google have also been awarded multimillion-dollar defense contracts to supply the U.S. military with powerful surveillance and cloud computing technologies.
They are among the companies listed as SJSU’s AI industry partners.
Protesters taped a banner painted with the words “FOR WAR + GENOCIDE” over the words “for Civic and Social Good” above the entrance to the AI Center, but custodians took it down shortly after, Duroyan said.
An AI fellow at the center, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, said he appreciated that students were practicing their First Amendment rights.
“I can understand why they’re protesting,” the fellow said. “Because it seems that we (the center) are in support of AI, and I understand that AI companies may be supporting certain parties that are contributing toward the war within Palestine.”
The fellow, who has been working at the center since its opening in early April, said it’s unlikely the university or library would turn away companies that want to host events there.
“Just in general, like right now, we’re kind of lacking events,” he said. “So I think any person who wants to come in and talk about AI, they’re probably going to welcome them … I can’t say if, going forward, they’ll only want people in here that truly want to make a positive change within society.”
There are no upcoming events scheduled at the AI Center at the time of publication.
