That's an interesting insight. It's not truly "academic" because such a language would not be considered interesting in a research sense; it has no clear vision, no central metaphor for computing.
But if you consider the Perl community a sort of academy with its own tastes and goals which have nothing to do with mainstream acceptance, then yes, it is academic.
But if you consider the Perl community a sort of academy with its own tastes and goals which have nothing to do with mainstream acceptance, then yes, it is academic.