Tag: Higher

  • WEEKEND READING The art of reimagining universities: a vision for higher education

    WEEKEND READING The art of reimagining universities: a vision for higher education

    Join HEPI for a webinar on Thursday 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am to discuss how universities can strengthen the student voice in governance to mark the launch of our upcoming report, Rethinking the Student Voice. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key questions.

    This blog was kindly authored by Professor Rathna Ramanathan, Provost, Central Saint Martins; Executive Dean for Global Affairs and Professor of Design and Intercultural Communication, University of the Arts London.

    The structure of our universities is stuck in the past. The recent post-16 education and skills white paper praises our universities as globally excellent institutions but calls for a reorientation towards national priorities and greater efficiency. As academics and creatives functioning as outsiders, we can use this position productively to define future pathways.

    We’re living through multiple crises at once – climate emergency, polarization, AI disruption – yet most universities still organize themselves around departments created decades ago. Institutions talk endlessly about ‘interdisciplinary collaboration’ and ‘preparing students for the future’, yet their actual structures often make both nearly impossible.

    At Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, we have tried something different. We have redesigned the College by rethinking what an art and design college should focus on and how it can work, guided by shared principles that emerged from asking: ‘What does it look like when we work together at our best?’

    The real question

    We ask students to be creative, adaptive, bold. To embrace complexity and imagine different futures. What could our universities achieve if we reorganised ourselves with the same creativity we demand from students?

    The institutions that thrive in the coming decades won’t be those defending traditions most fiercely. They will be those with the courage to redesign themselves for the world emerging, not the one they were built for. That’s uncomfortable. Structural change is difficult and uncertain. Letting go of familiar categories and hierarchies requires trust. Building new collaborative cultures alongside new organisational structures demands sustained effort. This discomfort might be precisely the point. If universities can’t model the adaptive, experimental, principles-led thinking we claim to teach, why should anyone trust us to prepare the next generation for an uncertain future? More bluntly, if we don’t practice what we teach, do we deserve to thrive?

    The problem: structure shapes everything

    For over a century, universities have organised themselves into disciplinary silos. This made sense when knowledge was more stable, and career paths were more predictable. But today’s urgent challenges  don’t heed disciplinary boundaries and require insights from science, policy, economics, ethics, design, and creative practice simultaneously.

    Most universities recognise this. They create joint programmes and support cross-department initiatives. Yet the fundamental architecture remains unchanged: separate budgets, isolated governance structures, academic staff working within disciplinary lanes. It’s like trying to renovate a house by rearranging the furniture while leaving the walls intact.

    For students, this disconnect is glaring. They see interconnected problems everywhere, yet are asked to choose a single discipline and stay within it. They want to learn how to think, not just master a predetermined skill set. Traditional university structures also inadvertently reinforce whose knowledge counts and whose doesn’t, often privileging Western over non-Western perspectives, theory over practice, and individual achievement over collective wisdom. In an era demanding intercultural, community-centred, and future-focused approaches, these inherited biases have become institutional liabilities.

    The experiment: principles before structure

    Central Saint Martins’ transformation began with a fundamental question: ‘What does it look like when we work together at our best?’ From this inquiry emerged five core principles that now guide decision-making at College level: address shared conditions that transcend disciplines; seek common ground through equitable collaboration; treat the whole life of the College as creative material; bring practice to every space; and deepen connections with communities beyond our walls. These aren’t aspirational statements. They’re operational principles that inform the creation of a new structure: ‘Schools of Thought’.

    Three schools of thought: foundations, not hierarchies

    Most university ‘schools’ function as management layers above departments with administrative structures for top-down control. At Central Saint Martins, we are inverting this model. Our Schools of Thought establish shared foundations beneath courses and programmes, creating common ground where disciplines naturally converge.

    Each school aims to be transdisciplinary (integrating ways of thinking), not merely multidisciplinary (putting disciplines side-by-side). They’re collective, not just collaborative. The naming strategy – C + S + M = CSM – emphasises the whole over parts. Rather than reinforcing disciplinary boundaries, they create space for working across schools while adapting to changing conditions.


    C School [Culture]     explores culture as a vital form of enquiry and expression, developing thinking and practice across art, performance and curation. It recognises culture in the immediate world around us, understanding it as a sense-making activity.


    S School [Systems]     explores how different forms of designing allow us to understand and intervene in the complex human systems shaping our world through graphic communication, product and industrial design, architecture, business innovation, and creative enterprise.


    M School [Materials]     investigates radical approaches to materials, making, and meaning-making through fashion, textiles, and jewellery to digital interaction, scientific innovation, and multi-species regeneration.

    Why principles matter more than plans

    What makes this transformation different from typical restructuring is its foundation in shared principles rather than predetermined outcomes. The principles emerged from collective reflection on the College’s actual lived experience, examining when authentic collaboration and meaningful impact happen. They aim to capture the heart of the College’s culture rather than imposing an abstract ideal. They create coherence without rigidity, alignment without conformity.

    Schools of Thought are not viewed as resolved but as vehicles for ongoing transformation. They provide low-walled frameworks for continuous evolution, adapting to changing conditions while staying true to core values. As communities and conversations develop, the schools themselves will transform, shaped by the very practices they enable.

    The deeper shift: embedding justice and sustainability

    Traditionally, art and design education has reinforced colonial perspectives, unsustainable production and cultural hierarchies; biases that reproduce invisibly through inherited disciplinary structures. The principle of ‘addressing shared conditions’ makes complicity in global crises unavoidable rather than optional, preventing justice and sustainability from being relegated to elective courses or diversity initiatives.

    ‘Seeking common ground’” creates space for marginalised knowledge systems, while ‘taking the whole life of the College as material’ reveals institutional truths through the lived experiences of our staff and our students rather than stated values alone.

    We can’t truly prepare students for the climate crisis, technological disruption, or polarisation by adding modules to unchanged systems. The structure needs to embody the values and capacities these challenges demand.

    What creativity teaches

    Creative education isn’t primarily about self-expression or beautiful objects. But approached as Central Saint Martins has, creativity becomes a methodology for engaging with uncertainty as traditional certainties collapse.

    ‘Bring practice to every space’ makes thinking-in-formation visible, cultivating comfort with ambiguity and the capacity to learn from failure—all critical for navigating unpredictable futures. “Deepen external connections” recognises that knowledge develops through genuine dialogue with communities beyond institutional walls, not expert pronouncements.

    These approaches value prototyping and iteration over perfect solutions, holding contradictory ideas simultaneously, collaborating across difference, and making abstract possibilities tangible. We want to apply creative principles to institutional transformation, treating the restructuring as an experimental, collaborative, and iterative process rather than a top-down plan.

    Lessons for all higher education

    Although rooted in creative arts, the principles-led approach transfers across sectors. Imperial College London’s recently launched Schools of Convergence Science reflects similar recognition that traditional structures no longer serve contemporary challenges. Structural change requires more than new organisational charts. It requires:

    • Culture shifts embedded in governance: Principles that guide decision-making at every level, ensuring new structures don’t simply replicate old patterns.
    • Foundation-level transformation: Creating common ground where collaboration becomes natural rather than requiring special initiatives.
    • Recognition of complicity: Acknowledging how inherited structures perpetuate problems, then actively working to transform those conditions.
    • Treating institutional structure as material: Applying the same creative, experimental, iterative approaches we teach students.
    • Making the whole life of the institution visible: Valuing informal experience alongside formal roles, practice alongside theory, collective wisdom alongside individual expertise.

    Any university can ask itself: What principles characterise when we work at our best? How could we design structures that enable rather than constrain that work? What would it mean to organise around shared conditions rather than inherited categories?

    As higher education gets increasingly othered in new policies, outsiders can provide the breakthroughs needed by taking a fresh perspective. As ‘The genius of the amateur’ points out, outsiders often succeed because progress is about generating models which we then test, apply and refine. We can’t do this alone at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, we need to do this collectively: to genuinely practice for ourselves what we teach and to create a space which isn’t about silos or othering but where all of us are welcome.

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  • What does the UK’s Autumn budget mean for international higher education?

    What does the UK’s Autumn budget mean for international higher education?


    Nicholas Cuthbert

    Nick began his career with Nottingham Trent University in the UK working in international student recruitment, before going on to a wide range of leadership and consultancy roles in the private sector. He joined The PIE in 2021 and is a key commentator on the current trends in the global higher education industry. He curates content for our PIE Live conferences and is the co-host of the Tales from the Departure Lounge podcast. Get in touch with Nick at [email protected]


    View all articles by Nicholas

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  • Higher Education Inquirer : American Christmas 2025

    Higher Education Inquirer : American Christmas 2025

    Mass surveillance is no longer a marginal concern in American life. It is the silent architecture of a society managed from above and distrusted from below. The cameras aimed at students, workers, and the precarious class reflect a deeper spiritual, political, and moral crisis among the elites who designed the systems now monitoring the rest of us.

    Universities, corporations, city governments, and federal agencies increasingly rely on surveillance tools to manage populations whose economic security has been gutted by the same leaders who now demand behavioral compliance. Cameras proliferate, keystrokes are tracked, movement is logged, and predictive algorithms follow people across campuses, workplaces, and public spaces. Yet those responsible for creating the conditions that justify surveillance—politicians, corporate boards, university trustees, executive donors, and policy consultants—operate in near total opacity. Their meetings take place behind closed doors, their decisions shielded from public scrutiny, their influence networks essentially invisible.

    This is not a coincidence. It is the logical extension of a neoliberal elite culture that elevates market logic above moral obligation. As the Higher Education Inquirer documented in “How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis,” the architects of modern austerity—professionalized, credentialed, and trained in elite universities—constructed social systems that demand accountability from the poor while providing impunity for the powerful. Their policy models treat human beings as units to be managed, scored, nudged, and surveilled. Surveillance fits seamlessly into this worldview. It is the managerial substitute for solidarity.

    The moral void of this elite class is perhaps most visible in the realm of healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, whatever its limitations, represented a modest attempt to affirm that healthcare is a public good and that access should not depend entirely on wealth. But the undermining of Obamacare under Donald Trump laid bare how deeply the nation’s policy culture had descended into nihilism. Trump’s efforts to gut the ACA were not about ideology or fiscal prudence; they were an expression of power for its own sake. Funding for enrollment outreach was slashed. Navigator programs were dismantled. Work requirements for Medicaid were encouraged, despite overwhelming evidence that they punished the sick and disabled. The administration promoted junk insurance plans that offered no real protection, while lawsuits were advanced to overturn the ACA entirely, even if doing so meant millions would lose coverage.

    This assault revealed the moral collapse of a political and economic elite that had grown comfortable with cruelty. It was cruelty performed as policy, sanctioned by corporate donors, embraced by right-wing media, and tolerated by the broader professional class that rarely speaks out unless its own interests are threatened. Even many of the centrist neoliberal policymakers who originally shaped the ACA’s cost-sharing structure responded with timidity, reluctant to confront the underlying truth: that the American healthcare system had become an arena where profit mattered more than survival, and where surveillance of the poor replaced accountability for the rich.

    As traditional moral frameworks lose their authority—whether organized religion, civic duty, or shared ethical narratives—many Americans have drifted into agnosticism or atheism not enriched by humanist values, but hollowed out by a sense of futility. Without a shared moral anchor, people retreat into private meaning or abandon meaning altogether. In this void, conspiracy theories flourish. People know they are lied to. They sense power operating behind closed doors. They see elite institutions fail repeatedly without consequence. When institutions offer no transparency, alternatives emerge in the shadows.

    The elite response is predictable: condemn conspiracies, scold the public for irrationality, invoke the language of “misinformation.” But this reaction deepens the divide. The same elites who created opaque systems—financial, academic, political, and technological—now fault ordinary people for trying to make sense of the opacity. In a society where truth is managed, measured, branded, and optimized, conspiracy becomes a form of folk epistemology. It is not always correct, but it is often understandable.

    Mass surveillance is therefore not the root of the crisis but its mirror. It reflects a ruling class that no longer commands moral authority and a public that no longer trusts the institutions governing it. It reflects a society that treats the vulnerable as suspects and the powerful as untouchable. It reflects a political order in which the dismantling of healthcare protections is permissible while the monitoring of poor people’s bodies, behaviors, and spending is normalized.

    If the United States is to escape this downward spiral, the cameras must eventually be turned upward. Transparency must apply not only to individuals but to corporations, boards, agencies, foundations, and the political donors who shape public life. Higher education must cease functioning as a credentialing arm of elite impunity and reclaim its role as a defender of democratic inquiry and human dignity. Public institutions must anchor themselves in ethical commitments that do not depend on religious dogma but arise from the basic principle that every human being deserves respect, security, and care.

    Until that reconstruction begins, the nation will remain trapped. The elites will continue to rule through metrics and surveillance rather than legitimacy. The public will continue to oscillate between nihilism and suspicion. And the moral void at the center of American life will continue to widen, one camera at a time.

    Sources

    Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

    David Lyon, Surveillance Studies

    Higher Education Inquirer, How Educated Neoliberals Built the Homelessness Crisis

    Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos

    Christopher Lasch, The Revolt of the Elites

    Sarah Brayne, Predict and Surveil

    Elisabeth Rosenthal, An American Sickness

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  • Bridging further education and higher education: A practical agenda for the post-16 reforms

    Bridging further education and higher education: A practical agenda for the post-16 reforms

    Author:
    Imran Mir

    Published:

    Join HEPI for a webinar on Thursday 11 December 2025 from 10am to 11am to discuss how universities can strengthen the student voice in governance to mark the launch of our upcoming report, Rethinking the Student Voice. Sign up now to hear our speakers explore the key questions.

    This guest blog was kindly authored by Imran Mir, Campus Head and Programme Lead at Apex College Leicester.

    The embedding of the further education and higher education sectors has been a longstanding policy goal, but recent reforms have caused an urgent need than ever. The UK government has set the ambitious goal of having at least two-thirds of young people go on to higher-level learning by age 25, with at least 10% of them pursuing higher technical education or apprenticeships. While such targets can be seen as overly ambitious, they will only come to fruition if the gap between further education and higher education is efficiently bridged. Without this, there is a risk of losing students during the transition from one educational stage to the next. These government ambitions highlight why bridging further education and higher education is so important. Aligning both sectors is essential to turning these national policy goals into real progress for learners.

    The persistent progression problem

    Although there has been some growth in participation in higher education, disparities remain. Students who come from disadvantaged backgrounds are four times less likely to have access to high-tariff universities. Whilst UCAS data for 2024 has shown growth in learner acceptances, this is largely down to an increase in the number of 18-year-olds, rather than a reduction in gaps between the most and least advantaged students. Further education is vital for social mobility; however, too many learners face major barriers when trying to transition into the higher education institutions of their choice.

    Five key levers to improve bridging

    1. Align curriculum and assessment
      When transitioning from further education to higher education, students will face a contrast in learning expectations. In the former, through A-Levels and vocational qualifications, assessments are exam-focused and often high-stakes. In comparison, higher education has a variety of assessment types, including coursework, presentations, and exams. These assessments are often less frequent, and a student’s grade is not as reliant on a single, high-stakes exam. To make this transition process smoother, higher education providers and further education providers should collaborate to co-design first-year assessments that look to integrate a blend of authentic tasks, ranging from portfolios to presentations. This would allow better preparation for students to progress into higher education while aligning expectations between further and higher education. This approach is supported by the Foundation Year Fee Cap Guidance, which explains the importance of curricula that support progression into higher-level study while avoiding the repetition of Level 3 content.
    2. Use admissions to recognise potential
      A large number of further education students, particularly those without access to enrichment activities, find it difficult to reach their potential, something which is not always recognised in higher education admissions. Many of these learners focus on technical or applied qualifications such as T Levels and Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), which develop valuable practical and professional skills. However, because these programmes may not include the same kinds of enrichment activities often valued in traditional academic routes, their achievements are sometimes overlooked in admissions decisions. Universities should value T Levels, Higher Technical Qualifications (HTQs), and other applied learning pathways. These routes must be recognised by universities. They must provide clear pathways showing how credits earned in further education can be transferred to the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE). This would result in the system being more inclusive for students who come from non-traditional routes into higher education..
    3. Share data and pastoral insight
      The lack of continued student support is another barrier. Colleges and universities must work together in creating a standardised set of transition data that includes information on curriculum, assessment types, and available support measures. For example, shared data could help universities identify where incoming students may need additional academic or well-being support. To enable a smooth transition, both sectors need to agree on how to share this information. The OfS Regulatory Framework promotes transparency in data sharing to ensure positive student outcomes.
    4. Co-deliver first-year teaching
      In certain subjects, co-delivering first-year content between FE and HE providers could help students with transitioning from further education. Modules on study skills, digital literacy, and professional competencies could be delivered jointly; this approach would particularly benefit students who work or commute. This method aligns with the OfS Strategy 2025–2030 Guide, which clearly stresses student success and sector resilience as a major priority.  
    5. Make the LLE a ladder, not a maze
      The LLE offers an opportunity for modular, credit-bearing study across a lifetime. For this vision to come to fruition, higher education institutions must look to implement clear credit transfer rules, transparent pricing, and clear pathways for learners to progress from Level 4 to full degrees. By having routes which are clearly mapped out, students will be better able to understand how to continue their education without getting lost in a complex system. The House of Commons Library LLE Briefing outlines how this could be achieved.

    Reflecting on the recent Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper (DfE, 2025), there is clear intent to have a more connected tertiary system through plans such as the Lifelong Learning Entitlement and stronger employer-education partnerships. The proposal clearly acknowledges many of the issues outlined above, especially the need for smoother progression routes and credit transfer between further and higher education. However, questions will remain on how effectively these ambitions are going to be implemented. Without unified collaboration from both sides, clear accountability, and investment in teaching capacity and resources across both sectors, the reforms risk reinforcing the existing divides rather than bridging the gap.

    The prize

    For the government to achieve its goal of equity, further education students must not just enter higher education but also succeed once there. The reforms present an opportunity; they must be matched with the practical changes in how we align assessment, recognise technical routes in admissions, share data, work together where possible, and make the LLE more navigable. By taking these actions, policy ambitions can be translated into real-world success for students.   

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  • Higher education postcard: Peterhouse, Cambridge

    Higher education postcard: Peterhouse, Cambridge

    Greetings from Cambridge! Today we’re looking at a college so old it doesn’t even need to be called “college”.

    Let’s go back to 1280. Edward I, aka Edward Longshanks, was on the throne. England was calm after a period of internal turmoil; part of the reason for this was wars waged against the Welsh and the Scots. And in Ely, Bishop Hugh de Balsham was petitioning the King.

    Successfully, as it turns out. His petition sought permission to evict secular brethren from the Hospital of St John at Cambridge and replace them with “studious scholars”, who would live in accordance with the rules of Merton College in Oxford (hospital meant something different in 1280 – not a medical facility, but guesthouse or almshouse, the hos being the same as in host).

    Clearly this was not entirely satisfactory, as in 1284 Bishop Hugh gained another charter which differentiated these scholars from the other residents of the hospital. Reading between the lines, perhaps the hospital wasn’t entirely happy at having the students in it. In any event, Bishop Hugh obviated whatever problems there were by purchasing two houses and providing for a master and fourteen fellows who must be “worthy but impoverished”. The fellows would worship at the Church of St Peter Without Trumpington Gate, and the college thus became Peterhouse. Not Peterhouse College, by the way – just Peterhouse.

    And it was thus, founded in 1284, the first formal college in Cambridge, although the university had been going for a few years, and with official status since 1231. It had to wait until 1326 for another college to be founded (Clare College, then known as University Hall), and then by 1352 there were six colleges – enough to organise a league table!

    Peterhouse then plodded along. In the maelstrom of Tudor England, its master, Andrew Perne, was skilled at working with the prevailing political and religious opinions. It was said that the letters on the weathervane at St Peters’ Church stood for “Andrew Perne, Protestant”, or “Andrew Perne, Papist”, depending on which way the wind blew. When he was vice chancellor of the university, Perne had the bones of Martin Bucer, prominent protestant theologian and organiser, and later Regius Professor of Divinity, exhumed and burnt in the market square.

    Peterhouse was the second building in England to be lit by electric lighting. William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, was a Peterhouse alumnus, and had them installed in 1884, to celebrate the college’s sexcentenary (the building that had them before was the House of Lords, in 1883).

    Peterhouse admitted women undergraduates in 1984, seven hundred years after its foundation. (Women were admitted to postgraduate study in 1983, but the poetry of the anniversary required me to focus on undergraduates here. Sorry!) It is fair to say that this places it towards the conservative end of Oxbridge colleges. And in this case it is a literal truth.

    Peterhouse became the breeding ground for a generation of right-wing conservative politicians, including the Michaels Howard and Portillo. This is connected to the appointment of Maurice Cowling and Roger Scruton as fellows of the college. The former’s student followers included one who, allegedly, wore a black armband on the anniversary of General Franco’s death.

    Peterhouse’s catalogue of alumni includes some very impressive names. Thomas Grey, poet and country-churchyard elegist is one. And then scientists: we’ve seen Lord Kelvin, physicist and mathematician; you can also have James Clark Maxwell, father of electromagnetism. And then add Frank Whittle of the jet engine, and James Mason, of more great films than you can shake a stick at. Five Nobel laureates are associated with Peterhouse, all of them in Chemistry, in 1952, 1962, 1962, 1982 and 2013. Which must be some sort of a record. And maybe scope for a song: “it’s lucky for Peterhouse when the year ends in two.”

    We should also note that Peterhouse is potentially an inspiration for the college in Porterhouse Blue, Tom Sharpe’s fairly scabrous look at Cambridge life and politics.

    And finally, a snippet from the Illustrated London News on 25 May 1968, announcing the appointment of a new master at Peterhouse.

    In this context, there’s nothing particularly noteworthy about Dr Burkill – I just think it is striking that the appointment of a head of college was then considered newsworthy.

    Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard. It was posted in Ipswich on 15 September 1905 to Miss E Parfit of Handford Road, Ipswich:

    Dear Ethel, Hope you will like this. With love from V.R.

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  • Political Violence, Systemic Oppression, and the Role of Higher Education

    Political Violence, Systemic Oppression, and the Role of Higher Education

    The ambush shooting of two National Guardsmen near the White House on November 27, 2025, by Rahmanullah Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, is the latest in a growing wave of politically motivated violence that has engulfed the United States since 2024. Lakanwal opened fire on uniformed service members stationed for heightened security, wounding both. Federal authorities are investigating whether ideological motives drove the attack, which comes against a backdrop of escalating domestic and international tensions. This ambush cannot be understood in isolation. It is part of a larger pattern of domestic political violence that has claimed lives across ideological lines. 

    Conservative activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated at Utah Valley University during a campus event in September 2025. Minnesota state representative Mary Carlson and her husband were murdered in their home by a man impersonating law enforcement, while a state senator and spouse were injured in the same spree. Governor Josh Shapiro survived an arson attack on his residence earlier this year. Even Donald Trump was the target of an assassination attempt in July 2024. Added to this grim tally are incidents such as the 2025 Manhattan mass shooting, in which young professionals, including two Jewish women, Julia Hyman and Wesley LePatner, were killed, and the Luigi Mangione case, in which a former student allegedly killed a corporate executive in New York. Together, these incidents reveal a nation in which lethal violence increasingly intersects with politics, identity, and ideology.

    The domestic escalation of violence cannot be separated from broader structures of oppression. Migrants and asylum seekers face detention, family separation, and deportation under the authority of ICE, often in conditions described as inhumane, creating fear and vulnerability among refugee communities. Routine encounters with law enforcement disproportionately harm Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and other marginalized communities. Excessive force and lethal policing add to communal distrust, reinforcing perceptions that violence is a sanctioned tool of the state. Political rhetoric compounds the problem. President Trump and other political leaders have repeatedly framed immigrants, political opponents, and even students as threats to national security, implicitly legitimizing aggressive responses and providing fodder for extremist actors.

    The domestic situation is further complicated by U.S. foreign policy, which has often contributed to global instability while modeling the use of violence as an instrument of governance. In Palestine, military aid to Israel coincides with attacks on civilians and infrastructure that human-rights organizations describe as ethnic cleansing or genocide. In Venezuela, U.S. sanctions, threats, and proxy operations have intensified humanitarian crises and political instability. Complicity with the governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia enables human-rights abuses abroad while emboldening domestic actors who mimic state-sanctioned violence. These global policies reverberate at home, influencing public discourse, shaping extremist narratives, and creating a climate in which political and ideological violence is increasingly normalized.

    Higher education sits at the nexus of these domestic and global pressures. Universities and colleges are not merely observers; they are active participants and, in some cases, victims. The assassination of Charlie Kirk on a campus underscores that institutions of learning are no longer insulated from lethal political conflict. Alumni, recent graduates, and professionals—such as the victims of the Manhattan shooting—are affected even after leaving school, revealing how closely academic networks intersect with broader societal risks. International and refugee students, particularly from Afghan and Middle Eastern communities, face heightened anxiety due to restrictive immigration policies, anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the real threat of violence. Faculty teaching topics related to immigration, race, U.S. foreign policy, or genocide are increasingly targeted by harassment, threats, and institutional pressures that suppress academic freedom. The cumulative stress of political violence, systemic oppression, and global conflicts creates trauma that universities must address comprehensively, both for students and faculty.

    Higher education cannot prevent every act of violence, nor can it resolve the nation’s deep political fractures. But it can model ethical and civic engagement, defending inquiry and speech without succumbing to fear or political pressure. It can extend support to vulnerable communities, promote critical thinking about the domestic roots of political violence and the consequences of U.S. foreign policy, and foster ethical reflection that counters the normalization of aggression. Silence or passivity risks complicity. Universities must recognize that the threats affecting campuses, alumni, and students are interconnected with broader systems of power and oppression, both domestic and global.

    From the White House ambush to Charlie Kirk’s assassination, from the Minnesota legislators’ murders to the Manhattan mass shooting, from Luigi Mangione’s high-profile killing to systemic violence enforced through ICE and police overreach, and amid the influence of incendiary political rhetoric and U.S. complicity in violence abroad, the United States is experiencing an unprecedented convergence of domestic and international pressures. Higher education sits at the center of these converging forces, and how it responds will shape not only campus safety and academic freedom but also the broader civic health of the nation. The challenge is immense: to uphold democratic values, protect communities, and educate students in a society increasingly defined by fear, extremism, and violence.

    Sources

    Reuters. “FBI probes gunman’s motives in ambush shooting of Guardsmen near White House.” The Guardian. Coverage on suspect identification and political reaction. AP News. Statements by national leaders following attacks. Washington Post. Analysis of domestic violent extremism and political violence trends. People Magazine. Reporting on Minnesota legislator assassination. NBC/AP. Statements by Gov. Josh Shapiro after Charlie Kirk’s killing. Utah Valley University and local ABC/Fox affiliates on the Kirk shooting. Jewish Journal, ABC7NY. Coverage of Manhattan mass shooting and Jewish victims. Reuters. Luigi Mangione case and court proceedings. Human Rights Watch / Amnesty International reports on Palestine, Venezuela, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Russia. Brookings Institute. Analysis of political violence and domestic extremism. CSIS. “Domestic Extremism and Political Violence in the United States.”

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  • Higher Education’s Long Reckoning With Indigenous Oppression

    Higher Education’s Long Reckoning With Indigenous Oppression

    [Editor’s note: United American Indians of New England host the National Day of Mourning. Their website is at United American Indians of New England – UAINE.]

    Each November, while much of the United States celebrates Thanksgiving, Indigenous communities and their allies gather in Plymouth, Massachusetts, and across the country for the National Day of Mourning. It is a day that confronts the mythology of national innocence and replaces it with historical clarity. For Higher Education Inquirer, the significance of this day extends directly into the heart of American higher education—a system built, in no small part, on the expropriation of Indigenous land, the exploitation of Native Peoples, and the continued structural racism that shapes their educational opportunities today.

    From the earliest colonial colleges to the flagship research institutions of the twenty-first century, U.S. higher education has never been separate from the project of settler colonialism. It has been one of its instruments.

    Land, Wealth, and the Origins of the University

    America’s oldest colleges—Harvard, Yale, William & Mary, Dartmouth—were founded within the colonial order that dispossessed Indigenous communities. While missionary language framed some of these institutions’ early purposes, they operated through an extractive logic: the seizure of land, the conversion of cultural worlds, and, eventually, the accumulation of immense academic wealth.

    The Morrill Land-Grant Acts of 1862 and 1890 expanded this pattern on a national scale. Recent research documented by the “Land-Grab Universities” project shows that nearly eleven million acres of Indigenous land—taken through coercive treaties, forced removal, or outright theft—were funneled into endowments for public universities. Students today walk across campuses financed by displacements their own institutions have yet to fully acknowledge, let alone remedy.

    Higher Education as an Arm of Assimilation

    The United States also used education as a tool for forced assimilation. The Indian boarding school system, with the Carlisle Industrial School as its model, operated in partnership with federal officials, church agencies, and academic institutions. Native children were taken from their families, stripped of their languages, and subjected to relentless cultural destruction.

    Universities contributed research, training, and personnel to this system, embedding the logic of “civilizing” Indigenous Peoples into the academy’s structure. That legacy endures in curricula that minimize Indigenous knowledge systems and in institutional cultures that prize Eurocentric epistemologies as default.

    Scientific Racism, Anthropology, and the Theft of Ancestors

    American universities played a central role in producing scientific racism. Anthropologists and medical researchers collected Indigenous remains, objects, and sacred items without consent. Museums and university labs became repositories for thousands of ancestors—often obtained through grave robberies, military campaigns, or opportunistic scholarship.

    The 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was designed to force institutions to return ancestors and cultural patrimony. Yet decades later, many universities are still out of compliance, delaying repatriation while continuing to benefit from the research collections they amassed through violence.

    Contemporary Structural Racism in Higher Education

    The oppression is not confined to history. Structural racism continues to constrain Native Peoples in higher education today.

    Native students remain among the most underrepresented and under-supported groups on American campuses. Chronic underfunding of Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs) reflects a broader political disregard for Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination. Meanwhile, elite institutions recruit Native students for marketing purposes while failing to invest in retention, community support, or Indigenous faculty hiring.

    Some universities have begun implementing land acknowledgments, but these symbolic gestures have little impact when institutions refuse to confront their material obligations: returning land, committing long-term funding to Indigenous programs, or restructuring governance to include tribal representatives.

    What a Real Reckoning Would Require

    A genuine response to the National Day of Mourning would require far more than statements of solidarity. It would involve confronting the ways American higher education continues to profit from dispossession and the ways Native students continue to bear disproportionate burdens—from tuition to cultural isolation to the racist violence that still occurs on and around campuses.

    Real accountability would include:

    • Full compliance with NAGPRA and expedited repatriation.

    • Transparent reporting of land-grant wealth and the return or shared governance of those lands.

    • Stable, meaningful funding for TCUs.

    • Hiring, tenure, and research policies that center Indigenous scholarship and sovereignty.

    • Long-term institutional commitments—financial, curricular, and political—to Indigenous communities.

    These steps require institutions to shift from performative recognition to structural transformation.

    A Day of Mourning—And a Call to Action

    The National Day of Mourning is not merely a counter-holiday. It is a reminder that the United States was founded on violence against Native Peoples—and that its colleges and universities were not passive beneficiaries but active participants in that violence.

    For higher education leaders, faculty, and students, the question is no longer whether these histories are real or whether they matter. They are documented. They are ongoing. They matter profoundly.

    The real question is what institutions are willing to give up—land, power, wealth, or narrative control—to support Indigenous liberation.

    On this National Day of Mourning, HEI honors the truth that Indigenous survival is an act of resistance, and Indigenous sovereignty is not a symbolic aspiration but an overdue demand. The future of higher education must move through that truth, not around it.

    Sources

    Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States.

    The Land-Grab Universities Project (High Country News & Land-Grab Universities database).

    David Treuer, The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee.

    Margaret D. Jacobs, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World.

    NAGPRA regulations and compliance reports.

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  • Chancellor Tade Oyerinde’s Congressional Testimony on Campus & Higher Ed (Campus.edu)

    Chancellor Tade Oyerinde’s Congressional Testimony on Campus & Higher Ed (Campus.edu)







    Higher Education Inquirer : Chancellor Tade Oyerinde’s Congressional Testimony on Campus & Higher Ed (Campus.edu)




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  • My Posts from Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshop – Teaching in Higher Ed

    My Posts from Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery Workshop – Teaching in Higher Ed

    As part of participating in Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop, we were given lessons and activities three times a week for six weeks. I had been blogging perhaps once or twice a year for a while now, never feeling like I had found my voice with those posts. Doing that much sharing via the written form seemed daunting, yet I had a strong suspicion that the discipline would pay off. I was not wrong at all on that front.

    Here are the various posts I wrote, along with an overview of the concepts explored in each one.

    01 – Getting Curious About Network Mapping

    Great insight lies in visualizing and analyzing the relationships that surround our work and learning. Networks are fundamental lenses for how we connect, influence, and grow.

    Key themes:

    • Network mapping and the difference between strong ties and weak ties (and how both kinds are essential to a thriving learning network).
    • The habit of giving first and nurturing relationships as network fuel.

    Quote:

    “Most intuitive notions of the “strength” of an interpersonal tie should be satisfied by the following definition: the strength of a tie is a (probably linear) combination of the amount of time, the emotional intensity, the intimacy (mutual confiding), and the reciprocal services which characterize the tie.” — Mark S. Granovetter (1973)

    Both strong and weak ties are vital to our learning.

    02 – Let’s Get Curious

    Allowing ourselves to wonder opens up our capacity to learn, connect, and co-create more deeply.

    Key themes:

    • Sparking curiosity means we tap into a power well beyond certainty (as illustrated so well through this beloved clip from Ted Lasso).
    • The world of work is increasingly complex; the very skills that matter now include creativity, imagination, empathy and curiosity.

    Quote:

    “The skills required to live in a world dominated by complex and non-routine work requires — creativity, imagination, empathy, and curiosity.” — Harold Jarche

    Stay curious, widen our lenses, and lean into the discomfort of not-knowing as the gateway to meaningful growth.

    03 – Connecting Birds, Grief, and Communities

    Grief, networks, and belonging are deeply intertwined in shaping the places where we learn, grow, and support one another.

    Key themes:

    • The isolation that grief can bring creates a powerful invitation to community when we’re willing to show up with vulnerably.
    • Communities (using Mastodon) and how we sustain communities when the baskets we placed our eggs in (platforms, networks) change or disappear and what that means for our learning ecosystems (I didn’t write about this in the post, but many say the answer is federated networks)

    Quote:

    “If we put our metaphorical eggs in one basket and something happens to that basket, there’s no putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.” — Bonni Stachowiak

    Invest in communities that embrace complexity, invite connection across networks, and hold space for both loss and belonging.

    04 – Engaging with Intentionality and Curiosity

    As I reflected on intentionality this week, I realized that showing up with purpose—not just going through the motions—significantly shapes what I notice, how I respond, and who I become in the process.

    Key themes:

    • Intentionality helps clarify why something matters and helps resist the pull of the urgent and focus on the important.
    • Analyzing who Harold Jarche follows on Mastodon offered an opportunity to reflect on my aims for the network.

    Quote:

    “Show up for the work.” — Bonni Stachowiak

    Jarche also gave some examples of the practices on which PKM is built upon, such as narrating our work and sharing half-baked ideas.

    05 – Scooping Up Adulting and the Benefits of Being Curious

    Moving through life’s messy, liminal spaces requires curiosity, humility, and movement.

    Key themes:

    • The relevance of the Cynefin framework in helping us learn in the complex domain.
    • The value of formal and informal communities and open knowledge and formal knowledge networks as our learning ecology.
    • Curiosity as a pathway through liminality: staying attuned to what is becoming.

    Quote:

    “In a crisis it is important to act but even more important to learn as we take action.” — Harold Jarche

    This Learning in the Complex Domain post by Jarche is likely the most important one for me to revisit from all that I read throughout these six weeks, as I’m still struggling to understand the Cynefin framework.

    06 – Why Isn’t RSS More Popular By Now?

    It’s still wild to me that RSS isn’t as common as navigating websites.

    Key themes:

    • A well-curated set of feeds via an RSS aggregator turns passive reading into active sense-making.
    • RSS remains undervalued in the age of algorithmic feeds, yet when we control our own feed-ecosystem we reclaim agency over where our attention goes.

    Quote:

    However, I’m picky about my reading experience and have gotten particular about being able to read via Unread on my iPad and navigate everything with just one thumb. — Bonni Stachowiak

    I was also glad to learn from Jarche about subscribing to Mastodon feeds and hashtags via RSS, though I haven’t experimented with that much, yet, since the Tapestry app does a lot of that for me.

    07 – Can You Keep a Secret?

    Understanding the frameworks behind our media tools unlocks far deeper insights than simply reacting to what comes our way.

    Key themes:

    • Exploring Marshall McLuhan’s Media Tetrad helped me see every medium as doing four things: extending, retrieving, obsolescing, and reversing.
    • Applying the tetrad to the smartphone made visible how it extends access and connection, obsolesces older single-purpose devices, retrieves communal spaces, and reverses into distraction and isolation when pushed too far.
    • This kind of analysis invites me to pause, notice, and interrogate the media I use daily rather than assume they’re neutral or benign.

    Quote:

    “The reversals are already evident — corporate surveillance, online orthodoxy, life as reality TV, constant outrage to sell advertising. The tetrads give us a common framework to start addressing the effects of social media pushed to their limits. Once you see these effects, you cannot un-see them.” — Harold Jarche

    Analyzing these media tools heps us choose how to engage with them, rather than passively being shaped by them.

    08 – Fake News Brings Me to an Unusual Topic for this Blog

    It is critical to engage in ways to increase the likelihood of us being able to identify fake news. .

    Key themes:

    • The articulation of four primary types of fake news — propaganda, disinformation, conspiracy theory, and clickbait — as outlined by Harold Jarche.
    • How propaganda intentionally spreads ideas to influence or damage an opposing cause; disinformation deliberately plants falsehoods to obscure truth.
    • The persistence of conspiracy theories despite lacking evidence, and how clickbait uses sensationalism to manipulate attention and action.

    Quote:

    Misinformation implies that the problem is one of facts, and it’s never been a problem of facts. It’s a problem of people wanting to receive information that makes them feel comfortable and happy. – Renée DiResta, as quoted in El País

    Our identities get so wrapped up in what we believe, it can be so challenging to consider how we might be part of combating fake news in our various contexts.

    09 – From Half-Baked to Well-Done: Building a Sensemaking Practice

    It can be so generative to share thoughts before they’re polished and this openness fuels learning, creativity, and connection.

    Key themes:

    • Half-baked ideas make space for iteration: they invite others in, rather than presenting a finished product that shuts conversation down.
    • Sharing early thinking helps me stay curious, flexible, and less attached to being “right.”
    • When we release ideas in progress, we give our networks something to build on, remix, or nudge in new directions.

    Quote:

    If you don’t make sense of the world for yourself, then you’re stuck with someone else’s world view. — Harold Jarche

    Let ideas be emergent rather than complete so that learning can unfold collaboratively.

    10 – The Experts in My Neighborhood

    Jarche introduces us to various PKM roles for this topic.

    Key themes:

    • Our learning ecosystems benefits from curating a diverse set of experts to help navigate complexity.
    • Through my PKMastery practices (bookmarking, sense-making, sharing), I can engage with expert ideas over time.
    • The real value comes not from one “expert,” but from a network of thinkers whose disagreements and different perspectives stretch our own thinking.

    Quote:

    “Writing every day is less about becoming someone who writes, and more about becoming someone who thinks.” — JA Westenberg

    The value of PKM is in curating many voices, cultivating a “neighborhood” of experts to follow, listen, question, and to build a rich, networked sensemaking practice rather than rely on single voices alone.

    11 – Network Weaving as an Antidote to Imposter Syndrome

    Turning toward connection can be one of our strongest antidotes to imposter syndrome.

    Key themes:

    • Network weaving reframes “Do I belong here?” to “Who can I bring together?” — shifting the energy from proving my worth to creating belonging.
    • Connecting people, ideas, and stories becomes my purpose: not to be the smartest person in the room, but to serve as a bridge, curator, and connector.
    • Vulnerability matters: acknowledging I don’t have all the answers, but inviting others to learn out loud anyway.

    Quote:

    A triangle exists between three people in a social network. An “open triangle” exists where one person knows two other people who are not yet connected to each other — X knows Y and X knows Z, but Y and Z do not know each other. A network weaver (X) may see an opportunity or possibility from making a connection between two currently unconnected people (Y and Z). A “closed triangle” exists when all three people know each other: X-Y, X-Z, Y-Z. – Valdis Krebs

    This reminder feels like fuel for the next leg of my PKMastery journey — leaning into weaving networks as practice not just for growth, but for belonging and shared strength.

    12 – I Can See Clearly Now The Frogs Are Here

    Growth often comes not from jumping to answers but from staying curious, experimenting, and traveling alongside fellow learners.

    Key themes:

    • Fellow seekers offer empathy, solidarity, and space to wrestle with ideas, often more supportively than experts alone.
    • As described by Harold Jarche, combining curiosity with connection can help transform seekers into knowledge catalysts, nodes in our networks who learn, curate, and contribute meaningfully.
    • Innovation and insight often emerge through playful experiments (half-baked ideas) from the beginner’s mind held by seekers.

    Quote:

    Your fellow seekers can help you on a journey to become a Knowledge Catalyst, which takes parts of the Expert and the Connector and combines them to be a highly contributing node in a knowledge network. We can become knowledge catalysts — filtering, curating, thinking, and doing — in conjunction with others. Only in collaboration with others will we understand complex issues and create new ways of addressing them. As expertise is getting eroded in many fields, innovation across disciplines is increasing. We need to reach across these disciplines. — Harold Jarche

    Seeking is not a sign of weakness, but as a source of collective curiosity, connection, and growth.

    13 – What Happens When We Start Making the Work Visible

    There is strength in making invisible processes and decisions visible.

    Key themes:

    • When we narrate our work, we open up pathways for real-time collaboration and shared learning rather than one-way transmission.
    • Narration allows for experimentation: sharing work in progress de-commodifies knowledge.
    • It shifts the emphasis from polished deliverables to ongoing learning — not just focusing on the final product, but how we got there, and what we learned along the way.

    Quote:

    The key is to narrate your work so it is shareable, but to use discernment in sharing with others. Also, to be good at narrating your work, you have to practice. — Harold Jarche

    Narrating our work offers a window into our process of learning.

    14 – No Frogs Were Actually Harmed in Describing Systems Thinking

    As I reflected on systems thinking, I found myself returning to how challenging (and how necessary) it is to see beyond events and into the structures that shape them. Revisiting Senge’s The Fifth Discipline reminded me just how often we can slip into reacting instead of zooming out to notice patterns.

    Key themes:

    • How easy it is to fall into organizational “learning disabilities,” like assuming I am my position rather than part of a larger whole.
    • Chris Argyris describes the phenomenon of “skilled incompetence,” where groups of individuals who get super good at making sure to prevent themselves from actually learning.
    • The invitation to practice systems thinking collectively, not just individually.

    Quote:

    You can only understand the system of a rainstorm by contemplating the whole, not any individual part of the pattern. – Peter Senge

    Sitting with this reminded me that lest we fall victim to skilled incompetence, we need to continually nurture the humility and curiosity to keep looking wider, deeper, and more generously at the forces shaping our organizations and our work.

    15 – Asking as a Way of Knowing: PKM Embodied By Bryan Alexander

    The potential for adding value through PKM helps make our contributions much richer when paired with curiosity, generosity, and intentional sharing.

    Key themes:

    • PKM isn’t just about what I read or bookmark — it’s about how I transform that input through asking questions, sense-making, and offering what I learn into shared spaces.
    • Public sharing (through podcasting, writing, conversation) complements private learning — the two together deepen meaning and foster connection.
    • “Adding value” can look like holding space for others’ learning — asking curious questions, offering resources, and modeling openness rather than trying to prove expertise.

    Quotes:

    Every person possessing knowledge is more than willing to communicate what he knows to any serious, sincere person who asks. The question never makes the asker seem foolish or childish — rather, to ask is to command the respect of the other person who in the act of helping you is drawn closer to you, _likes you better_ and will go out of his way on any future occasion to share his knowledge with you. — Maria Popova

    It was great getting to see this all in action, through a dinnertime conversation with Bryan Alexander.

    16 – The Gap

    Fear and self-doubt often keeps us from beginning and from recognizing how much value we hold even before we “arrive.”

    Key themes:

    • There’s often a gap between where we are now and where we want to be — but that gap doesn’t diminish the worth of what we’re already learning and creating.
    • True learning requires embracing vulnerability: pursuing new practices.
    • Public sharing matters: showing work in progress reminds me (and others) that learning is ongoing and that we don’t need to wait until we’re “expert enough” to contribute something meaningful.

    Quote:

    “The biggest gap is between those doing nothing and those doing something.” — Tim Kastelle

    Commit to practice, to sharing, and to staying open to becoming someone who learns out loud.

    17 – Walking With PKM: Reflections From Six Weeks of Practice

    Stepping away from busyness — even just to wander — creates the space for real insight and creative thinking.

    Key themes:

    • Walking becomes a practice of reflection: giving my brain space to wander and surface ideas.
    • Learning isn’t always quantifiable.
    • The value in a consistent PKM practice allows me to my own capacity to notice, wonder, and ultimately learn.

    Quote:

    Creative work is not routine work done faster. It’s a whole different way of work, and a critical part is letting the brain do what it does best — come up with ideas. Without time for reflection, most of those ideas will get buried in the detritus of modern workplace busyness. — Harold Jarche

    PKM is part discipline, part letting go of the busyness, and part listening to whatever emerges.

    18 – The Last Step Toward the First Step

    “Mastery” is not an endpoint, but a habitual practice of learning, sharing, and growing.

    Key themes:

    • Value lies not in perfection, but in consistency: the small acts of sharing half-baked ideas and imperfect work.
    • What I do contributes to a larger learning ecosystem: by sharing what I learn, I contribute to collective sense-making and encourage others to do the same.

    Quote:

    It is not being in the know, but rather having to translate between different groups so that you develop gifts of analogy, metaphor, and communicating between people who have difficulty communicating to each other. — Ronald Burt

    The real power of PKM shows up not at the end, but in the consistent rhythm of seeking, sensing, and sharing.

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  • The Last Step Toward the First Step – Teaching in Higher Ed

    The Last Step Toward the First Step – Teaching in Higher Ed

    This final PKMastery workshop post is what I’m referring to as the last step toward the first step, meaning that while I’m through with the formal/structured activities and curated lessons from Harold Jarche, there’s such tremendous potential for even deeper learning, with a renewed commitment toward PKM.

    Jarche shares a report from many years ago about the most valued Future Work Skills. He writes of how: “The report identified six drivers of change.

    1. Longevity, in terms of the age of the workforce and customers
    2. Smart machines, to augment and extend human abilities (quite obvious since 2023)
    3. A computational world, as computer networks connect
    4. New media, that pervade every aspect of life
    5. Superstructed organizations, that scale below or beyond what was previously possible
    6. A globally connected world, with a multitude of local cultures and competition from all directions

    Ten future [present] work skills were derived from these drivers and these were seen to be critical for success in the emerging network era workplace. In 2014 a relatively simple infographic was published to show the relationship between these drivers and skills. Of these 10 skills, four compose the essence of personal knowledge mastery:

    1. sense-making
    2. social intelligence
    3. new media literacy
    4. cognitive load management

    Participants in the workshop are then invited to focus on which competency we would most like to develop in, as part of our overall PKM practice. I’m torn between sense-making and cognitive load management. While further understanding of systems thinking and sense-making practices would certainly help me in my ongoing learning, I recognize my lack of sufficient discipline for what a focus on cognitive load management might bring me.

    Throughout this process of blogging my way through Harold Jarche’s Harold Jarche’s Personal Knowledge Mastery workshop, I essentially wrote the equivalent of half of a book. When I tell myself that I don’t have time for certain pursuits in my life, these past six weeks would seem to counter those self-limiting beliefs. While I’m not actually interested, necessarily, in writing a book for other people at this exact moment, my shift in focus to a more reflective and open writing style for all these posts has felt liberating. As Ronald Burt shares:

    It is not being in the know, but rather having to translate between different groups so that you develop gifts of analogy, metaphor, and communicating between people who have difficulty communicating to each other.

    Having no idea who will ever read these words, but knowing that the writing practice this workshop has instilled in me has been tremendously helpful in my own sense-making. James Lang would say I’m getting lots of practice writing to an imaginary audience and that has felt good. By Jarche asking us to engage on Mastodon and to use the #PKMastery hashtag, I’ve been able to share my work with a niche audience, reconnecting with people I hadn’t been in regular touch with for a long while, in addition to meeting a couple of new people along the way.

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