Microsoft has fired two employees, including Indian American Vaniya Agrawal, for disrupting an event celebrating the company’s 50th anniversary.
On Friday, Ibtihal Aboussad, who has called on Microsoft to stop working with the Israeli government, interrupted a speech by the company’s AI head, Mustafa Suleyman. Later, Vaniya Agrawal disrupted a Q&A session with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer.
Following the incidents, event staff asked both employees to leave the venue at Microsoft’s headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Agrawal resigns calling Microsoft a “digital weapons manufacturer
Shortly after the protest, Agrawal sent a company-wide email announcing her resignation, effective April 11. In the email, accessed by The Verge, she said, “I cannot, in good conscience, be part of a company that participates in this violent injustice.”
She pointed to reports claiming that Microsoft Azure and AI technologies are used in Israel’s military operations and surveillance, and added, “our work is fueling this genocide.”
Calling Microsoft a “digital weapons manufacturer,” Agrawal accused the company of violating its own human rights commitments. “Microsoft leadership must divest from Israel and stop selling lethal technology to power apartheid and genocide,” she wrote.
She concluded the resignation letter encouraging colleagues to use their positions to challenge Microsoft’s policies: “If you must continue to work at Microsoft, I urge you to use your position, power, and privilege to hold Microsoft accountable to its own values and mission.”
Microsoft accept resignation, ‘effective immediately’
However, Microsoft told her on Monday that it had accepted her resignation effective immediately.
Meanwhile, the company informed Aboussad that her employment had been terminated due to “acts of misconduct,” according to an email reviewed by Bloomberg.
The company didn’t immediately provide comment.
Who is Vaniya Agrawal?
As per her LinkedIn profile, Agrawal did her Bachelor of Science in software engineering from the Arizona State University in 2016-19 and graduated with a summa cum laude.
She was one of only 35 students at ASU to receive the Grace Hopper Scholarship, which allowed her to attend the 2017 Grace Hopper Conference.
Before beginning her career in software engineering, she briefly worked as a tea consultant and social media manager at Adagio Teas in 2015. From March 2016 to December 2017, she also worked as a medical assistant and receptionist at the True Health Medical Centre.
How the two employees staged protests at the event?
“Mustafa shame on you,” Aboussad told Suleyman, in part. “You claim that you care about using AI for good, but Microsoft sells AI weapons to the Israeli military. Fifty thousand people have died.”
Suleyman responded, “Thank you for your protest. I hear you.”
Microsoft, in the termination notice, told Aboussad the accusations were “hostile, unprovoked and highly inappropriate.”
Both employees worked as software engineers, they told Bloomberg last week. They’re affiliated with No Azure for Apartheid, a group that has protested Microsoft’s sales to the Israeli military over the country’s conduct in its war in Gaza. The pair lost access to their corporate email and chat accounts shortly after Friday’s protests, they said.
