Dr. Theresa Kulbaga: “hope is a practice”

TK delivered this speech at the FAM+OSA Public Town Hall on Feb 6, 2026.

Hi everyone, I’m TK and I’m the president of FAM, Miami’s faculty and librarian union. I’m also a regional faculty member who is seeing regional campus faculty and students abandoned as the university turns us into a technical school.

Across Miami university, librarians and faculty are reeling. I walk around and talk with my colleagues in all divisions and departments, and things look bleak. We are seeing a significant change in Miami’s mission — no longer a liberal arts university, no longer a teacher-scholar university, no longer invested in civic literacy or global studies — now a tech and trade school designed to keep industries happy — and cuts to department resources, research funding, and faculty lines. Restructuring has arrived in force in Hamilton and Oxford, and our colleagues in the arts and humanities are being targeted and some are being nonrenewed. The university is spending millions and millions of dollars on sports arenas, AI-driven ed tech that doesn’t work, outside corporate consultants who know nothing about education, and outside law firms who continue to try to bust our hard-fought union contract gains in our successor contract campaign. All while telling us they have no money to invest in the educational mission.

At the state level, SB1 and other legislative attacks on higher ed are stoking fear and self-censorship in faculty even as ICE is targeting Springfield Ohio this month using military tactics against people who are the heart of the community and economy. At the national level, the department of education has been gutted and the current administration is attacking education as a public good across the land.

No wonder we’re reeling. What is the answer to this devastating set of assaults on us? Where is the hope?

Yes, we need to fight at the departmental level, the divisional level, and through FAM, our local union. Our upcoming contract fight is more important than ever. But it’s not enough in this cultural and political moment. What we really need is a collective and coalitional response that does not stop at the departmental or even Miami university level. That’s why FAM has been building coalitions with students, parents, community members, and other unions across SW Ohio and the nation. Unions are at the forefront of the pushback across the country, winning in the courts and in the streets. Strong unions are associated with stronger communities and democracy.

All of the things we are facing in higher ed are also being faced by K-12 public education, nurses and social workers, and creatives all over the state and country. The problems we are facing at Miami will not be solved by keeping our heads down, or even by leaving the university, since these problems are happening everywhere. Your silence will not protect you at this moment. It won’t protect your job, your students, or your profession. It won’t protect your freedom to teach and learn. It will only show the people in power that you are fine with what they are doing.

The only response to fascism is community. Unions and coalitions of regular, everyday people are leading the fight in Minnesota, Ohio, and across the nation, standing together in community to show ICE and the current administration that they do not have all the power — in fact, the power resides in the people. Period. If you’ve been inspired by the pushback in the twin cities, as I have, then you know what I’m talking about. When we act together, collectively, we win.

The most common way people give up their power is by not realizing that they have it. No one is actually apathetic – a local Starbucks organizer said to me once: “apathy does not exist.” Instead, people feel disempowered. They don’t know what to do and they don’t know the power they have to resist. Our job as a union, as a coalition, as students and educators who care, is to exercise our collective power even as we empower others and show them a more hopeful path forward.

Those of you who attended Miami OSA’s ICE OUT! rally last Friday know that taking collective action is not only the only way forward; it is also inspiring and life-affirming. It cultivates hope. How do I remain hopeful in my own life, even as I see everything that is happening at Miami and in the world? I find hope in fighting back. I fight back and then I feel hope — not the other way around. In other words, HOPE IS A PRACTICE. (All credit to bell hooks and Mariame Kaba for this language and insight.)

Let’s not sit back passively and wait for hope to happen to us or for someone else to give us hope. Instead, let’s create the collective response needed to create and sustain hope in our collective futures.