The relationship between activism and academia has been a source of debate since many decades. This debate has been reissued by the neoliberal model in higher education and the managerial culture setting up as a reference for thinking about the university. Some important repercussions of this context are the way academics understand their work, their relationships with their peers and their role in the university. Despite the centrality of this problem, we know little about the impact it has on the academics' work culture. The findings we share in this paper are the result of the discursive analysis of 60 interviews with researchers from various disciplines conducted during 2016 and 2021. Based on the analyzed interviews, this article examines the constructed boundaries between activism and academia and contributes to the debate by recognizing the academics' political subjectivity.