Dartmouth tells us that "[o]verusing the 'I' might make the reader feel that the paper was overly subjective" but I suspect that the reason many people avoid the first person singular is to sound overly objective. It seems to me that the most important thing for academic writing to be is honest and accurate. Also, as Jonas pointed out, taking responsibility is vital; third person writing can be a dodge.
A clumsy choice of voice situation to deal with is the separate facts of multiple authors: "We believe that being accurate and specific is important but when I (Gunnar) tried to mention a personal experience in the middle of our first person plural writing, the solidity of 'we' began to crumble."
Some of telling students not to use "I" may be an attempt to enforce a bit of formality: In our TMZ world, many students tend to refer to strangers by first name. (I don't think it's an egalitarian statement paralleling Teena's feminist form.)
Gunnar
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