This short article discusses the issue of academic freedom: the central thesis is that its decline is the consequence of a long process of domestication of intellectuals. In the field of ideas, the loss of academic freedom matches the inexorable march of power into the lives of citizens. In order to achieve the current levels of popular obedience there is a need of a group of professional intellectuals devoted to the spread of the narrative of state, and above enthusiastically attack all those who step out of the chorus. The article analyzes a document on academic freedom, that would be considered revolutionary nowadays, signed by American luminaries in 1915. The last few pages are about a recent episode in which the present writer, professor in Milan, had to face the new Inquisition.
