2020, issue 45, Teresa Carvalho: Since the institutionalisation of the modern university, Higher Education institutions have become one of the main pillars of modern societies, constituting themselves as the main ideological supports of the nation-state, and being the guarantors of democratic and egalitarian societies. In this context, the defence of academic freedom, through the support of the nation-state, was seen as a fundamental pillar for the disinterested advance of knowledge.