From what I have seen, these criticisms are inapt at Emory. The second danger is the creation of a new discipline called interdisciplinarity, which competes for resources, students, and faculty with traditional disciplines such as medicine, law, theology, or psychology. If interdisciplinarity becomes its own, self-perpetuating, bureaucratic machine, I think we have failed in interdisciplinary scholarship altogether. I've certainly seen it in many interdisciplinary conferences and in certain legal conferences which attempt to deal with a new topic in a provocative way. Even granting that every new methodology takes a while to get started, it can become an invitation for silliness and untutored speculation.
Interdisciplinary studies can in extreme cases encourage and even legitimate dilettantism.
I worry, frankly, for myself when I've done work in theology or history, and for others who dabble in law, whether we're really equipped to undertake that kind of rigorous use of those tools as necessary to make them effective, and to do them the honor that they're due. JW One is resisting the creation of a new discipline called interdisciplinarity. Two, healthy, rigorous skepticism about any new interdisciplinary initiative. Every interdisciplinary initiative has to earn its spurs through cogency of argument and demonstration of its utility and efficacy for the particular discipline. There is a pervasive sense among people who do interdisciplinary scholarship on campus, including myself, that Emory's research specialization ethic has been resistant to interdisciplinary scholarship.