Might that academic community respond by buying more Steem and launching a "bidding war"?

This is similar to what I speculate as well:

Since it takes STEEM Power to perform vote negation, this will have the side-effect of creating additional utility for STEEM Power, which could translate to more demand. If a user decides they want to negate another user, but they still want curation rewards, they'll have to get more STEEM Power.

^{https://steemit.com/steem/@inertia/creating-demand-for-steem-power-vote-negation}