iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

"Honey, wake up, the new Council of Trent just dropped."

Nicolò Dorigati, Opening session of the Council of Trent in 1545. Painting showing figures in a high room with a blue arched ceiling. Paintings of saints on the walls and an altar with crucifix at the center of the image. This is flanked by bright orange/red seats with bishops who continue towards the foreground of the painting. At the very foreground and background observers in darker clothes/robes congregate. Several look back towards the painter/viewer.

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

James Ryan @jdryan08.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

I could do this all day, but you get the point(s). Trust in higher ed ≠ trust in Ivy Leagues. Budgets are moral documents and if you want to examine trust in higher ed, look at how states prioritize public higher education.

125344

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

James Ryan @jdryan08.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

The combined undergraduate and graduate student populations of all Ivy League schools is about 140,000 students. The CUNY system alone is 250,000.

151360302

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

I've been waiting for someone to say this. Durell Stone's skinny pillars just make my toes curl.

020

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

I think MA's often bring in more money for universities than undergraduate degrees per student, but if an expensive subject like jewelry is going to be cost effective it needs to have enough students to make the equipment and studio expenses worth it. So they would also be at risk if UG courses go.

020

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

Sub-disciplines like ceramics, printmaking, etc., are increasingly being consolidated into generalist "fine art" programs that are increasingly becoming mishmash of other axed degrees where students get a broad base of skills but no opportunity to specialize. It's really sad

110

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Admins wondering why there's a demographic cliff.

130

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

Sunday Scaries but you're an academic and it's nearly the last week of summer... 🤢

041

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

David Higham @oldtrotter.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

This should be self evident but clearly isn’t. From @lewisgoodall.com

The problem is not that higher education has failed as an engine of social mobility. It is that, for too long, it has been treated as the only engine. The curriculum is not the problem which is driving our NEET malaise; the weakness of local economies is. Any Labour administration should therefore tread very carefully before dismantling any part of the comprehensive educational settlement created by the Labour governments of the 1960s. Burnham's proposals also misunderstand the multi-layered nature of the modern university, which in many cases is as likely to offer vocational courses as strictly academic ones.
In any case, let's stop the obsession with STEM subjects and
"practical" training. There is already too much snobbery in the assumption that working-class students are somehow less interested in the arts and humanities. And we've never needed those graduates more. In an age in which we are already outsourcing so much of our critical thinking to machines, and in which none of us can be entirely sure of the truth of what we see, where the world's complexity is ever deepening, subjects like philosophy, history, political science, linguistics, classics and literature have rarely been more important.
I'm sure our English graduate prime minister might agree.

414675

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

The way she completely avoids the expert "well, actually" response is also brilliant. Nolan is too shallow to understand the moral meat of his source materials (for any of his films) and that's the problem worth talking about.

021

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

EMILY WILSON @emilyrcwilson.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

4. It's less fine to waste your expensive diverse cast by terrible screen-writing, giving them zero convincing characterization or attempt to make us care about the relationships, and tokenism.

13181069

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

“Its narrative structure is gimmicky. The writing is abysmal. None of the characters has convincing motivation for their actions or words. There are no sex scenes, and all the food looks horrible.” 🔥🔥🔥

000

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Just backed up my Dropbox. Cheers.

110

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

One of the dads at the playground today: “as a Mexican it feels strange to root for Spain, you know?!” 😂

020

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 19/07/2026

Please also see Iqbal Geoffrey! Lawyer/painter who sued MoMA for human rights discrimination in 1971 for not giving him an exhibition. Also worked at the UN for a bit and liked to send naughty checks to Cold War philanthropic orgs. - Sincerely, Colby's wife ;) gemmasharpe.info/wp-content/u...

Check written in 1964 by Iqbal Geoffrey for the Asia Society in New York, signed with red pen. Check is a CONTRIBUTION TO A CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION but worth only $1.99.

250

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

He also came into a restaurant where I worked once. He was extremely tall and very warm.

000

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Yes! My favorite parenting podcast uses him as an example of effective co-regulation. (The bit where he's trying to coax Timmy out of the car saying "I'm scared, too." I think about it every time my toddler flips out.)

110

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Anna Kornbluh @annakornbluh.bsky.social · 14/06/2026

how very dare you

328744

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

profchander @profchander.bsky.social · 13/05/2026

100 best novels of all time: 100. art 99. refuses 98. the 97. quantitative 96. logic 95. of 94. ranking . . . 1. giovanni’s room

0409

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Matt Seybold @mattseybold.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

What I wish for everybody to remember when Canvas comes back online: The reason OUR data can be held for ransom is because Instructure, their owners (KKR private equity & Dragoneer venture capital), & our own employers (see ASU Atomic) monetize it. It's Canvas that hacked education & stole our IP.

242050766

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

I couldn’t finish it. I couldn’t get over feeling like I was reading a first year grad student retrofitting every trendy postcolonial theory into a novel format and… hey that’s exactly what I was reading! Give me Sally Rooney’s Marxist sidebar-rants any day.

010

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 22/04/2026

I lived in Pakistan for a bit and YEP!

010

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Magic Rectangle @magicrectangle.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

“Your budget is being illegally slashed with zero oversight, here’s why it’s your fault actually” articles are going wild these last few years

11707

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

Watch this clip. Professors will recognize this kid as the student who didn't do the reading but still has very strong opinions about how it's all "bullshit," except this time he's not the callow student who's going to fail your course, he's the reviewer who's going to cancel your grant.

31657511726

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Ah. Thank you. I have also thought recently about the consequence of my argument, which was: higher ed was marketing a palatable version of femininity to counter culture war claims of deviant feminists. One consequence is coding “wine moms” as domestic terrorists — a hop, skip, and a jump.

212415

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 26/01/2026

Funny as my mind has been drifting to @tressiemcphd.bsky.social's essay on Bama Rush the last few days. Beyond the gender prescience, how Rush is the perfect rightwing foil to real community-building. Rush "community" as self-interested, exclusive, hierarchical, tidy and aesthetically pleasing, etc

nytimes.com

Opinion | In Alabama, White Tide Rushes On (Published 2023)

1161

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Hadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 12/01/2026

protip: to exclude economics journals from the search add "capitalism"

2494

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 09/01/2026

Could someone invent a "Private Equity Lookup" app so I can check whether the family run "since 1875" local business isn't in fact a subsidiary of Billionaires International LLC? Something like those barcode apps that tell you when your moisturizer is full of arsenic would be awesome, thanks.

030

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

I have an especially strong "not angry, just disappointed" reaction to academics bringing artworks into their discussion with nary a glance at what art historians have already said about them. It happens so often! (*and yes, I'm totally angry about it...)

150

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Nate Holdren @nhold.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

someone should invent a thing that's like a university but it's goal is to facilitate learning

7378117

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

As I was just saying. They will scale up random “schools” based on market speculation and then close them down when demand wanes. Thats the plan.

764589

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Sonja Drimmer @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social · 09/12/2025

REPEAT AFTER ME (but really, after Neil Kraus): Wage stagnation and underemployment are not problems that education can fix. We cannot "upskill" students into well-paying jobs that do. not. exist.

215667

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Hadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

when i review an article charitably

0541

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Dr Selena Wisnom @lswisnom.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

5245181434

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Elisabeth R. Anker @libankerdc.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

The #1 lesson from yesterday’s blowout: Humanities majors killed on the job market 1) Mamdani- Africana Studies 2) Spanberger -French 3) Sherill - Global History

181267363

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

MarianaTrench @marianatrench-88.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

One anthropomorphic evolutionary event I didn’t see coming was the rise of the public utility and service sector into metaphorical powerhouses on social media, and I’m here for it 💯%!

09016

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

My great grandfather fought in it. He was in artillery and said very little except that they struggled to move the guns without going over bodies. Just unimaginable carnage.

231

Gemma Sharpe @gemmasharpe.bsky.social · 13/10/2025

I ask myself the same question, every single time!

010

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

profchander @profchander.bsky.social · 11/10/2025

by the end of this class students will gain insight into u.s. history while developing their skills as composers of rap interpretations of major historical events

071

Reposted by Gemma Sharpe

Judah Grunstein @judah-grunstein.bsky.social · 17/09/2025

It would be good if these kinds of retrospectives, as well as cultural coverage in general, included a look at the institutions' records in the political economy. Lowry's tenure included multiple rounds of bitter union action, including a 134-day strike in 2000, over low wages and poor healthcare.

nytimes.com

He’s Left MoMA Smarter, Richer and at a Crossroads

18317