I think that's certainly true in some disciplines and for some researchers. It's a continuum. It's very hard to draw a hard line as to what's activist and what's not.
If you, let's say, believe that the truth is highly subjective and believe that what you say contributes to a discourse that contributes to power relations, you might very well want to be selective in the evidence you use in order to promote one side—perhaps to promote whoever you think happens to be more oppressed—as sort of one kind of ideology within the broad spectrum of the academic ideas space.
I think what I'm calling more broadly “activist research” is very well ingrained in parts of academia. I'm not saying we should get rid of it—