Agency and stewardship in academic development : the problem of speaking truth to power

In prising open the ‘value games’ that constitute the politics of academic development as this Special Issue does, the profession has once again taken the opportunity to examine how it operates and behaves in a higher education environment fraught with narratives of contradiction. To my mind, there is something to be cherished about a field that engages so fully in an analysis of its practices and values at a time when the shape and conduct of academic and educational development worldwide is increasingly and unashamedly political, and likely in ways that trigger both desirable and undesirable effects. In shifting our gaze to the heuristic affordances of political ontology – a dimension Di Napoli (2014) persuasively argues deserves more attention in the academic development literature – the papers and commentaries in this Special Issue invite a response to a significant contemporary conundrum. It is this: amid the array of contested and politically difficult agendas, how do academic developers enact and imagine a future for themselves (and the profession) in ways that recognise and take seriously the business of their own political power, and in particular, their responsibility to speak truth to power?