YES you can discuss but with proper Confidentiality and non disclosure agreement. Keep records of presentations and take duly authorized signature of same. ideal would be audio or video recording of meeting.
Some of my best friends are academics, but.. academics like to talk a lot, and have an imperative to publish, other than that, academics are an excellent choice. Many Universities also have innovation centres attached, and will usually offer free 30min consultations if you are prepared to go to the effort of fronting up.
If your idea requires some kind of actual gadget/machine to make it work, I'd recommend talking to an engineer. Engineers of all fields are usually pretty good at spotting ideas that won't work, engineers also work with a lot of confidential technical material, so are used to handling this, and most importantly, don't derive their income from patents. And you can get a lot of advice for the price of a beer.
Don't expect all ideas to lead to patents, I've had maybe 10,000 ideas over the decades, yet have only 5 patents, your mileage may vary. I've made money by using "ideas" to solve client's problems, so they make products that work, get income from this, and pay me. Fortunately the magic is in the electronics in the box, so no real need to patent these products.
