The name, Advocates for Academic Freedom, has a dual purpose: to emphasize the need to return to the original definition of many words in the English language and to advocate for the academic freedom of all students and teachers. It is an effort to stop the current level of institutionally accepted bullying of those who hold conservative ideologies.

Since the 1930s there has been a concerted effort among many citizens to confuse the meaning of accepted vocabulary.* By declaring that definitions of words are subject to personal goals and experiences, the purpose was to deliberately confuse issues by making everything relative so that members of a society would accept perceptions as truth and question the existence of any absolute truth. With absolutes out of the way, a society questions specific values and the role of ethics in a society. Most deleterious has been the fact that those with weaker arguments would be given an advantage in social and political debates.

The consequence is that the dictionary definition of academic freedom has been manipulated so that it can be granted less often to those with conservative ideologies. It is the goal of Advocates for Academic Freedom to take back the original definitions of our English words, to encourage respect for the search for truth, to stop the institutional bullying of those holding conservative ideologies, and to reinstate critical thinking skills, values, and ethics into our educational system.

*Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, p.11, 12, 17, 26,30, 33, 34, 60, 166

Some additional reading which would shed light on this issue are:

God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr. 1951 (an easy read and very worth the time)
More Adam Smith, Please…and less Barbara Ehrenreich by Charlotte Allen “Weekley Standard”, November 29, 2010.