Noal carl writing in his newsletter over on Substack argues that academia over the decades has moved left in its political idealogy. He says that some of the swing is partly due to a self-reinforcing process: in that conservatives don't want to enter a field that they largely see as being hostile to them. In the same way, some women don't enter fields dominated by men. However, he also adds that the shift might also be due to the influx of women into academia. He notes that more women might have chosen to enter academia because it's an area that is more sensitive to gender equality.
From the article,
It’s therefore plausible that the influx of women into academia over the last thirty years contributed to academia’s leftward shift, and to the rise of woke activism in particular. (It was by no means the only contributor; most of academia’s leftward shift was probably caused by social homphiliy, political typing, discrimination and other self-reinforcing processes.