The part of the story that I'm trying to emphasize is that the "ranks," although heavily embedded in academia to the point of controlling it, are perceived enemies of the public at large. They hold power within the academic world but are disliked outside of it, and the outside forces are responsible for the declines of enrollment, and so on. True or not it's self-consistent. You could compare it to the executives at a corporation that was notorious for polluting and hiding scientific evidence: they hold power within their company, and even if the public found out what they were doing and started to react it would still be very dangerous for an employee within the company to speak out against them. You can't say, for example, "Kim Jong Un isn't really powerful because the US is sanctioning his country, so you should try to usurp his position" because although he has little power outside of his country, he has a lot of power inside of it.
To further cement the point, imagine a kidnapper defending themselves by saying, "I could not have exerted force on the victim because I am not powerful, and I can prove that I am not powerful because if I was powerful I would not be in court."