Even a moderately ambitious attempt to map the basic aspects of academic freedom would eventually end up at the shore of a limitless ocean of acts, values, traditions, norms, knowledge forms, and bonds that altogether make up that banal and quotidian thing which is our life in academia. Attempts to curb academic freedom, that is, threatening researchers‘, teachers‘, students‘, and administrators‘ work and life, together with annihilating institutions of learning and inquiry, quite understandably mirror accurately the complexity of academia itself. Academic freedom threats can be classified by their seriousness, that is, the number and severity of breached rights associated with academia. Forms of suppressing academic freedom can be evaluated simultaneously by the latency of wrongdoings and also by the silencing mechanism connected to autocracy. While case-based inquiries on academic freedom offer important contours of oppression and matter-of-fact borders that surround academic life, these inquiries have a limitation to grasp and portray the different manifestations of silence, the many faces of self-censorship, and the real significance of slow decay in disrupting academic cultures. The presentation will offer a quick outline of the structure of attempts that aim to enhance academic freedom and will offer a few principles and possible actions for consideration that may make the work of academic freedom relief more effective.