I see President Chace and Provost Chopp as powerful ambassadors for interdisciplinarity. They know what it is, they have done it themselves, and they are serious about rendering Emory a more receptive institutional vehicle for interdisciplinarity. JW Interdisciplinary scholarship has the great danger of encouraging monopolization, and that needs to be resisted. There is no universal theory of knowledge, no universal theory of truth, no universal theory of beauty, no universal theory of justice. There are multiple theories with varying levels of cogency, universality, and efficacy that need to compete.
Some disciplines lend themselves more readily to multiple answers to subject matters.
I think of law, of theology, of biology as universal sciences. These things deal with questions of justice, of faith, of the body that are universal because they affect all persons individually and in community. It does not mean they can answer all questions, and it certainly does not mean their methodology lends itself to monopolistic takeovers of the particulars of literature or economics or any other sphere.