The term academic freedom these days invokes controversies on freedom of speech, de-platforming and cancel culture. These are important debates but they are not the focus of this essay, for the simple reason that they are not the area of my knowledge and expertise. Rather, my focus will be on the role of economic resources in determining opportunities in academic education and research, freedom in the positive sense. I will develop three broad propositions: (i) economic inequality begets academic inequality, which in turn sustains economic inequality; (ii) economic inequality curtails positive freedom and positive academic freedom; (iii) to enhance positive academic freedom, policy should target general economic inequality as much as specific academic inequality.