i don't think all academics are driven by trauma. but academia attracts ppl who experienced school as a central space of validation, maybe the only place they were ever praised/"seen." also, academic accomplishments are wielded to counter parental neglect & societal debasement.
This demand for moral clarity/purity in fiction (or perhaps art more broadly) and a belief that anything that strays from that or requires a lot of grey is tacitly supporting Something Bad/Regressive Politics