Academic freedom is an actual issue since long time ago. In 399 BC, when Socrates was charged for an allegation of corrupting youth minds, scholars have been in danger. In Indonesia, on the New Order era led by Soeharto, attack to scholars were widespread throughout the country. Many people have realized that such threats have continued right up to the present. From Hermansyah of ITB’s Telecommunication expert, who was gotten into bloody attack on July 2017 by strangers after revealing an Islamic scholar’s pornography chat is fake to Suteki of UNDIP’s Professor of Law, who was suspended from his teaching post on May 2018 after being accused of supporting an extreme religious group called Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), academic freedom for scholars in Indonesia seems disrespected and unprotected ‘again’ nowadays. Many scholars argued that the interferences to academic life is not a one-off incident but forms a general trend toward a restrictive regime of control over ideology based on their interests. Also, external political interests count for being a motive to attack scholars. Universally, Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) emphasizes that everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression free from any interferences and powers. However, scholars still found themselves being targeted or limited to do academic activities. By using the juridical-normative method with comparative and statutory approach, the research aims to elaborate the history and development of academic freedom in the world and to know how far the protection of academic freedom for scholars in Indonesia based on the UDHR.