This lecture argues that the politicisation and instrumentalisation of the university caused by neoliberal frames has as a result the depoliticisation of knowledge and of the academic as individual. This depoliticisation has turned academic freedom into a right to disengage not only from the political fight around these issues but also from the deliberation about knowledge. The lecture uses the thinking of Arendt and Bourdieu to propose a different approach to the conceptualisation and practice of academic freedom. [This article was presented at the Daantjie Oosthuizen Academic Freedom Lecture, Rhodes University, 31 October 2014.]