I don't think it's so much that it requires an interest in academia, but that it requires a shift in thinking towards abstractions that still aren't mainstream, relative to OOP (in its various forms) and unadorned events/listeners. Principally, that shift is toward higher-order functions. Yes, those same HOF abstractions are popular subjects for academic research and teaching, but they're not inherently academic subjects.

True, but this paradigm shift has been pending for nearly half a century and there doesn't seem to be any progress, just periodic rediscoveries.