Sherrod Brown Tells Students Not to ‘Cave’ to Trump at IOP Forum

Former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown called on Harvard students to “stand strong against Trump attacks” at a Thursday Institute of Politics forum discussion with Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Connie Schultz.

“I talked to every group I’ve met on campus — I asked them to stand strong against Trump attacks,” Brown said. “How important it is that an institution with this reputation, globally and nationally, stand up and don’t compromise with some of the most important things we stand for as a nation.”

Brown added that he would urge students not to “cave” to Trump — who he called “the most powerful president, perhaps ever” — like other institutions that have recently had their hands forced by his administration.

“I look what Trump did to CBS and to Stephanopoulos — and CBS caved. I look at the law firm in New York, and they caved,” he said. “I look at what happened at a prestigious university in New York City, a private university, and they caved.”

In an interview after the event, Brown recommended that Harvard students leverage their institutional connections — from the Board of Overseers to the President’s office to “influential” faculty — in order to withstand pressure from the White House.

“What happened at that prestigious school in New York — this country cannot afford it to happen at Harvard, any more than Yale, or Princeton or Berkeley or Stanford or any of these schools,” Brown said.

Throughout the forum, Schultz and Brown, who celebrated their 21st wedding anniversary Thursday, also discussed the process of optimistically moving on from Brown’s recent senate race loss to Republican Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio).

“We have a little wooden sign in our living room that says no whining on the yacht,” Schultz said.

“Every job is hard. People that serve in the cafeteria here have hard jobs, they just don’t get much for it,” Brown said. “The people that clean these buildings have hard jobs, they just don’t get much for it.”

“Complaining about our stations in life, it’s at best unattractive,” he added.

During his time in the senate, Brown was a champion for workers’ rights — an effort that he and Schultz aim to continue with their nonprofit think tank Dignity of Work Institute, launched just last month.

Though his term in the senate has ended, Brown said he hopes to continue to defend his constituents in Ohio, many of whom he said feel frustrated by the economic state of the country, and the loss of jobs in a neoliberal era.

“They think the system’s rigged against them. They saw tens of thousands of steel jobs lost,” he said.

According to Brown, this perception of a “rigged” system can lead to a wariness of the status quo that points to a stronger need for atypical policies like Trump’s — such as this week’s implementation of tariffs on dozens of major trading partners.

“From sort of everybody — the serious people in Washington, elected officials, media, newspaper editors of all strikes — the response has been, ‘These are terrible,’” he said of the tariffs. “But the response has also been, ‘Let’s go back to the economic order we had.’”

“Well, if you live in Youngstown, Ohio,” Brown continued, “you don’t think that going back to the present economic order is all that great, because you feel the system is rigged.”

Despite the political challenges, Schultz highlighted a message of optimism and action, especially for students.

“You’ve had so many advantages being at this university,” Schultz said. “You deserve to have this chance.”

“This is an incredible opportunity,” she added. “So what will you do with your big, beautiful life?”