@toomanytrees I would entirely agree with this. I know of someone who is partway through a PhD at Oxford, after a lengthy academic career. I'm sure she is studying, but her primary role is training the next generation of activists. Literally lecturing on how to behave when arrested, what to say to the police, and so on. She has multiple convictions for supergluing herself to stuff and otherwise being annoying but, if you challenge her views at all, she bursts into tears and tells you she feels threatened.
It really is immensely tedious and it is very much both learned and taught.