There is a growing trend of statist attacks on academic freedom worldwide. Although the governmental crackdown and control of academics and universities has upsurged in recent years, the neoliberal regime of austerity has in fact been the greatest source of violence against universities. The resulting university is increasingly similar to a corporation with the primary goal of contributing to economic performance. In this context, academic freedom is first and foremost a labour issue and it is threatened once corporate and market logics become normalised in university policies and practices. Therefore, this roundtable proposal starts from an understanding that the recent attacks on universities in Hungary are not isolated occurrences and should be conceived in their internal connection with attacks on broader social, economic and political rights and contextualised within a regional as well as global context. This brings to the fore the importance of turning a (self-) critical gaze into academic institutions, the crucial role and responsibility of university communities in exposing the inequalities, violence and injustices in the era of deepening crisis of capitalism as well as rethinking/extending the boundaries of the university and community of learning in an effort to tackle marginalisation and exclusion within the broader societal context. The specific points of reference of this discussion will be the Roma Graduate Preparation Program and Open Learning Initiative based in CEU, and the ongoing attacks on the academy in Turkey.