That seems to assume that universities are completely unified and unanimous organizations, acting coherently to achieve a common goal. This is hardly true of any organization, but especially true of universities, which can be better thought of as "garbage cans" (in fact, university did serve as a model case for the "garbage can" model of organizational behavior).
Stated differently, it is a hodge-podge of various interest groups and agendas that form constantly changing organizational configurations. So the issue is not whether a particular interest can be found there, but how salient it becomes at a particular time. And that salience depends of a multitude of factors, ranging from positions occupied by its members within the university organization at a particular time, to outside influences (e.g. who brings more outside funding, who enjoys good graces of the powers that be, etc.), to general cultural/ideological fads, and to the cognitive frames of those who look (i.e. whether the observer is looking for evidence of "liberal" or "conservative" bias, or perhaps fishing for like-minded fellow travelers).
The bottom line is that, despite their own delusions of grandeur, universities are amorphous and largely inconsequential bodies whose main function is producing needed credentials for those in a position to pay for them. If they have any political influence at all, it is when they are being used by the powers that be in a similar way a drunk is using street lights - for support rather than enlightenment.
Wojtek