Chapter IX: Perceptions of Interdisciplinarity Within Colleges and Universities

The world that we live in is shaped by the influences of our institutions. We use our interdisciplinary brains to dive head-first into the environmental influence of the institutions we encounter. As previously discussed, our first contact is the institution of family which creates a framework for our moral development. I use the phrase ‘framework development’ as family provides an ethical guide for us to live by depending on the family you grow up in. As you grow in life, you expand to use a familial framework inside of new frameworks, in new institutions, such as government, society, and schooling to develop and grow our interdisciplinary brains. This introduces a contention, commonly from others who focus on a lens of inherent oppression, suggesting that interdisciplinarity is somehow held down or stifled given their placement in the lottery of life. However, this is not static – given interdisciplinarity as a concept – familial institutions provide a framework, but can be shaped overtime based on individuality, such as the kid who made academic success from a broken home, or the kid who degenerated from a loving family of wealth, the framework development is important to conceptualizing the influential impact of institutions, and their ability to expand or limit our interdisciplinarity.

It’s clear, the great importance of the familial, governmental, and societal institutions that are present, however, this chapter will focus on the educational institution as it is of great importance to understanding interdisciplinarity, solely for the reason that learning, life, and society are pillars of interdisciplinarity and all have a thread-line connected to the educational institution, more succinctly within higher education. One might ask what about elementary and secondary education? Well, one might say the public educational system that is prevalent today come from two areas: (1) the governmental policies that influence public education for a citizenry; (2) theories and practices developed at an institution of higher learning. Most of the leaders that influence the policies and practices of public education, come from the institutions of colleges and universities, thus harboring great influence over the learning, life, and society of individuals. In this chapter, I will present the university in a way that might be familiar to some, but unfamiliar to others, almost as a critique on the perceived interdisciplinarity of the modern higher education institution – ironically – through using interdisciplinarity.

First, we must establish what the university was and what the university is. We harken back to the Medieval Era and the creation of the trivium and the quadrivium as the tenets to a proper education, this carries into the Enlightenment Era where you see a free and liberating science of the trivium and quadrivium be expanded using enlightenment values of rationality, freedom, nature, and science. You might say the university itself was born to be an interdisciplinary institution, creating individuals in society who had freedom, embraced nature, and carried themselves with dignity and reason. Over time, especially since the expansion of commercialization, colleges and universities became more focused on preparation and highly focused on disciplines. This is not an issue with colleges and universities, so long as the disciplines allow for ideas outside of the disciplinary walls all while staying grounded with logic and reason.

The universities of today present a divide, rather a fractioning of disciplines. One might say it is a hierarchy of disciplines that have formed both naturally and aesthetically. I am a huge fan of football, and for this analogy I would like to use college football to crystalize the next few points. An avid observer can decide out of the 117 or so NCAA Division I college football teams, about 5 or 6 that have a chance to play for the national championship every year based on many factors (access to talent, money etc.). This is the cruelty of college football, you can have all the optimism as a fan of University of Louisiana Monroe (sorry for an alma mater member reading) starting out the season 0-0 and know were on the same field as everyone else, unfortunately that is not the case, given there are teams with more cache, a member of bigger conferences, and on paper better players. Sure, we want to be fair to the ULM faithful, even though they might never even play one of these teams with a big cache (Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, LSU, Florida, etc.), but we would like to think in a society, ULM can play Alabama, and maybe, just maybe ULM could win, but they rarely do win, or even get the chance to play one another. Teams like Alabama and others with the big cache are referred to as blue bloods with long standing ties to the college football world, numerous championships, and numerous funds for their program. This is the second time I have mentioned money with college football, and do not be fooled that it is a big, if not the biggest influence, within this arena of ‘amateur’ sport.

In a way current college and university academic programs, much like football programs reflect a sense of fractionation between football schools and programs inside the university. I am going to divide some of the university programs into categories relating to college football schools:

• Blue Blood Programs: Medicine, science, engineering, and law are considered the blue blood programs within universities. Large grants, availability for patents, and public need are the necessity for these programs in society provide a thriving framework within a college or university system.
• Mid-Level Programs: Nursing, education, public policy, and business are considered mid-level given their professional distinction, steady demand in society. public want can be shaky at times, but societal need will always be present. Another note to add, two-year institution programs will fall in this category such as skilled trades and other technical programs given their consistent need for technical vocation in society.
• Low-Level Programs: Arts, social sciences, literature, and communication. These degrees are valuable to the individual, but volatile when it comes to societal need. Work will be present, but is more based on societal want, rather than societal need. These are more fluid and free programs, compared to the rigidness of blue blood programs, however, the individual freedom of one has to be accepted by the individual mind of another in order to translate into societal want.

This might be a harsh realization if you have realized your chips have been put in on a University of Louisiana Monroe rather than an Alabama or a nice mid-level like the University of Oregon. This is to point out the fractionization on the hierarchy of the university and the programs from the past, as this fractionation has been created and focused on professions so deeply there is very little interdisciplinarity between the programs. Sure, individuals who enter low-level programs rarely will be economically viable, however, most get in these field for themselves, rather than the societal need or want and we can learn from these areas. On the other hand, considering the members in the low-level programs must be open to listening to the mid and blue blood programs to understand the pragmatic and rational reality of society. This is where trouble arises, given this fractionation within the institution.

Issues within Colleges and Universities

The modern college and university campus are more diverse and expansive with more students enrolling than ever before. Along with this, tuition prices have risen to astronomical heights over the years matching the enrollment. This comes with the competition in the workforce and the need for strict specialization in fields of work. Shumar outlines the rise of college tuition coming from bureaucratic legislation, the expensive process of collective bargaining with professor unions, and the consumption advertising of the college life, especially in the United States¹. The modern university no doubt is connected in every way to the political, social, and economic factors making it an influential piece of the conversation about learning, life, and society in the present. Some have levied a change with the university process from Senator Elizabeth Warren advocating for refinancing student loans towards a concept of less or free post-secondary education²; to finding a middle ground between need and merit based tuition reform towards balancing the success of the student matched with the enrollment³. The correct decision on college tuition is an ongoing debate between accessibility, equality, and maintaining standards.

This contrasts with the prevailing question of ideology within the post-secondary system discussing accessibility, equality, and standards. One might think its rational for a student who achieves A’s within their university classes, that they pay less through a merit structure. However, certain ideology reflects a ‘benefit of cognitive privilege’ perpetuating an oppression system, where certain individuals benefit over the other based on unconnected traits such as race, gender, and sexual orientation which have no bearing on knowledge acquisition and application. This is a problem that happens in universities and proliferates toward stagnant discussion about proper policy on issues within the real world, given the influence that university has on society. Conversation about merit cannot happen within university policy, because of the dialogue about merit/need model being an unfair system not accepting of being equitable. This ideology does not only happen with tuition policy, it is a prevailing ideal in all pockets of the university system.

In previous chapters, I discussed the Marxist, new-left, and Frankfurt School ideas on interdisciplinarity, essentially concluding that the form of critical utopianism goes so far as a theory towards creating an idea for a better, but not actually being used in the decision making of the process or as a process of laws, or a framework for everyday life. Essentially, an analogy for this is like saying you could use a whisk for your eggs or a fork, whichever you prefer, and whichever is needed based on your desired solution. The problem with this analogy, especially relating to universities, is that they have tried to use the whisk for everything from eggs, to cutting steak, to painting the house, and to be used as a weapon in a street fight. This is an issue on ideology that is prevailing within universities and is creating a knowledge vacuum, given the tools to expand knowledge and create actionable solutions are buried under outlandish and quite frankly, barmy planning instituting unnecessary credence towards unconnected traits. This is not to say that certain identities are not important, they are important for the individual, and are normal. Just societies would accept those individualities and not even need to worry about these identities because they have a place in a just society including influential policies in colleges and universities.

Alas, the marker of an unjust society is one that creates separate identities and places them in order of perceived importance. Universities today are attempting to marry this identarian ideology with the concept of interdisciplinarity. They are however, feigning the concept of interdisciplinarity through a narrow ideological lens. Most universities have outlined their interdisciplinary action within certain policy statements, however, do not develop an understanding based on the need for interdisciplinarity as a function of thinking. Others have a little bit more of a grasp on it in relation to research, but the concept goes beyond research to use interdisciplinarity in a truly actionable way. For example, one school in Canada outlines that interdisciplinarity studies relies in the arts, life sciences, and social sciences. Another institution in the Southern United States essentially renames a general degree or an undeclared major as ‘interdisciplinary studies’ with no focus on the actual process of interdisciplinarity. I saw one school offer the definition of interdisciplinarity in the process of finding solutions to challenging questions that cannot be answered through a disciplinary lens, but does not seem to outline the foundational principle of interdisciplinarity and the natural innateness for human learning. This perhaps creates a strange juxtaposition about interdisciplinary programs being present, but not using interdisciplinarity in the way it was to be intended, which is perhaps the reason for the ideological struggle within universities today.

I categorize university institutions today as anti-interdisciplinary. One may find an argument against this, so I find it important to review the concept of interdisciplinarity, and the prevailing notions within colleges and universities today. First, interdisciplinarity is not a program ideal on a pamphlet, it is a way of thinking, a natural – innate way to process information through multiple cognitive streams and create an actionable solution. Throughout history we have used interdisciplinarity to observe problems within our learning, our life, and our society and have created solutions through pragmatic, logical, rational, and ethical motives for our betterment. With that said, unfortunately universities have embraced a narrow, ideological lens basing structures on oppression including cognitive knowledge, they see the interdisciplinarity mind as an oppressive tool, and that thinking should be interdisciplinary, but in a fractionated way to appease the knowledge vacuum of identitarianism, contradiction, and false dichotomies based on obscure references, illogical processes, and unethical motives. This is the most concerning given that the identitariansim and the fractionation of simple disciplinary understanding is being repackaged and marketed as interdisciplinary studies or interdisciplinarity and it is a false narrative.

The issue with this, is that it provides a false sense of how knowledge is created and hinders our ability to provide knowledge in society. This is done by pushing out true interdisciplinarity outside of the institution leaving only the identitarian concepts as the baseline for all areas of learning, life, and society. I draw the identitarin concept of the fractionation of interdisciplinarity to The Great Schism during the Middle Ages which created a knowledge vacuum based of its time, leading to failures of governance, society, and living life. This identity comes in the form of a shift in thinking, as Stephen Hicks describes as an apparent ‘intellectual’ revolution of postmodernism⁴. This circles back to the ideology of truth being anti-foundational, which benefits the idea towards a knowledge vacuum of cognition, and a rejection of logic and rationalization.

We discussed previously about the different programs from blue bloods to low level. So why would a knowledge vacuum become relevant? Well the authoritarian radicalization of this ideology which started in the low-level programs are slowly bleeding into the middle and blue blood programs within universities, which will then proliferate inside other institutions such as family, government, societal, and public policy (i.e. using the whisk, where the whisk should not be used). This has created an epistemological battle between strict and narrow identitarianism and rational interdisciplinarity, where identitarianism only focuses on one knowledge stream of oppression which is a pure example of anti-interdisciplinary. This is already a troubling realization which is having a profound effect on universities and the suppression of knowledge, speech, and societal implications with the growth of phenomenon such as ‘cancel culture’, ‘anti-Europeanism’, and ‘wokeness’ in the institutions. Many scholars have attempted to challenge the notion of this identiarianism to outline the flaws, but the other side will not play nice and more extensive measures must be taken.

A Battle for Knowledge

Freedom of expression and ideological freedom are corner stones to the cognizance of every individual. However, when identitarianism encroaches on foundational systems and true interdisciplinarity thinking, problems do arise, and to challenge this notion is needed. Using a theory for understanding is one thing, forcing a theory to shape a false understanding of the world is unacceptable, and that is where the biggest problem seems to come to the surface. How did this fight start? One can look at it as a progression of knowledge suppression right under our noses. In his podcast The Portal, host Eric Weinstein offers a critique of the university system by introducing the mechanisms in place that create this framework of the controllers of the learning process. He introduces the Gated Institutional Narrative (GIN) as the phenomenological concept that information is held within gated organizations such as media, politics, and universities – furthermore, provide themselves as the supply chain managers of ideas within society. Additionally, he adds this with the Distributed Idea Suppression Complex (DISC) which reflects the notion of idea suppression for natural enhancement of knowledge to meet the fragile structures that these institutions hold⁵. Eric adds on to this – going deeper with his definition:

“Now, taking it apart, the center of it is idea suppression. Not all ideas are good. And so, idea suppression is very frequently understood as an important concept when we’re talking about something like bigotry, where we’re talking about something like violent ideology. Of course, you want to suppress certain ideas. But these are not the ideas that are principally important inside of the DISC. The DISC is actually a complex. It is a large collection of different structures, and it’s not controlled in any one place. Many of these have emerged separately. But what makes an aspect of the DISC—what shows you a particular component, is that it protects institutions from individuals who are making valid and reasonable points. So, if you imagine that the institutions have become incredibly fragile because they’re in fact built for growth, and that plan for their growth obligates them to tell untruths, and to hide certain characteristics, because they are not, in fact, able to grow at the rates in which they are supposed to—you need some complex for making sure that that information doesn’t reach the bottom entrance to a pyramid structure.”⁶

I found this concept quite prescient with what is reflected in universities today, especially relating to concepts of foundationalist truth and knowledge vacuums. In a way, the GIN and the DISC are the beginning of a proliferation of how knowledge is used in institutions to create their own narrative on what truth is and what it should be. This goes beyond standard ideas of economic and political reform, educational and public policy, or social and psychological determinants. We might agree that reform needs to happen in some way to provide a closing of the economic wealth gap, political reform on taxation, enhanced educational policy, and a sense of justice that works for the whole of society; however, this concept is held behind an institution that works in this fragile state.

I would like to unpack this a little bit more in the framework of colleges and universities relating to knowledge and epistemology. In medieval England, fractionated districts or administrative areas were formed as manors distinct from surrounding members⁷, these areas often had administrative and jurisdictional rules different from the other areas based on feudal control, similar to religious parishes during the Medieval era. This administrative area was called a soke (pronounced soak) and presents an interesting window into the relation of current roles in the university. In many ways the university acts as its own administrative district of identitarianism and ideological stance away from the pragmatic, rational, and logical understanding. Much like the GIN and the DISC, universities hold down specific ideals of truth and logic in the pursuit of their own identity goals and their administrative agenda. The word soke had me thinking about the role of the university and using the word soke helped me create an acronym of what I am seeing with knowledge and epistemology within the current university system. Therefore, I introduce the SOKE or the Systematic Oppression of Knowledge and Epistemology.

Much like the feudal lords and papacy in the creation of oppressive sokes, the university is currently using the tenants of identiarianism to subdue logic and reason through a systematic oppression with policy, administration, and teaching. The SOKE itself can be considered a phenomenon reflected in the policies and administrative levies inside the college and university systems. In Canadian universities for example, a sample population (n = 3318) found that most professors reflecting disciplinary socialization with high proportions in union militancy, gender, and economic equality are predominantly found in the university, especially in the humanities⁸. Equality is one thing, and most should be for the equal opportunity of both men and women, or rich and poor, or black and white to achieve goals within an institutional framework for hiring and administrative policy, this is naturally a liberal framework. Where the issue gets muddy is when illiberal equal outcomes enter which fuels the SOKE and allows for universities to oppress meritorious knowledge for the sake of gender, or sexuality, or equity policy based solely on economics, either rich or poor and away from the meritorious notion of competency through knowledge.

This is then mirrored in the teaching inside colleges and universities where the SOKE can be expanded upon towards the students in the terms of access and grades. What is in academia, especially in undergraduates, is the professors allowing students to use critical thinking, but provide certain theories that fit their narrative in terms of ideological lean; sure the more adept and competent students are, they can challenge the professor critically of their ideals. However, the system that is created in universities reflects a power/dependent model where the student is almost afraid to share their opinion, less be shamed, mocked, and brought up on unfounded charges in front of university kangaroo courts. Although she was a teaching assistant during the process, Lindsay Shepherd, a masters’ student, was brought up on hate speech charges at Wilfred Laurier University. She was shamed and lambasted by the leftist-elite members of the university for showing a video from TV Ontario highlighting a debate with Jordan Peterson (a common enemy to radical left individuals)⁹.

Luckily for Shepherd she is a strong person with strong convictions and fought back against the university, but some are not, and they fall into a trap of identitarianism as some unfair pandering to milk the egos of the identitarian professors inside colleges and universities. This comes from the dependence of students to the power of the professors, as in the power to apply grades (sometimes without a rubric), provide references for post-grad degrees, provide graduate and teaching apprenticeships to certain students who pander the most and not to others, even provide access to grant money and scholarships where merit is not the question but ideological fit is. This SOKE is a virus with negative outcomes within college and university systems to enhance identitarianism above all, over everything else.

One of the most important concepts a college or university is its ability to do scholarship. The SOKE through identitarianism has also found its way in scholarship, some might argue it is the primary reason identitarianism has taken hold within the institution. Eric Weinstein also challenges the notion of the ‘rule’ behind peer-review research not embracing knowledge or true epistemology, rather maintaining a stasis or a status quo along some vague agenda¹⁰. I outline this as a negative feedback loop in terms of research and scholarship in universities which reflects the first fallacy on the mission of publishing research through an identitarian lens. First, the common and most pervasive concept through the modern college and university identity is to change the status quo (eg. Pro-Marxism and Anti-Capitalism). However, it is through the status quo that educators benefit through publication and competition in the peer-review process (A classical capitalist framework). If you are still not convinced, think of the concept of ‘citescore’ which ranks journals on their publishing acumen creating fierce competition, especially in high-impact journals. The grift is found in the research being published which continually challenges the status quo but does nothing to change it, resetting the stagnant loop over again. Here is a visual representation of the feedback loop:

Unfortunately, this is nothing new, this is a current trend in academia; and this spineless response to actual problems in the world through research that is based on ideology rather than the search of logic and reason. Some of the postmodern research that is present reflects this and is commonplace in the humanities. The debunking of the research process, especially in the humanities was brought to light with the Sokal affair or Sokal’s hoax in 1996¹¹, and more recently the Grievance Studies Affair (i.e. Sokal Squared) from James Lindsay, Peter Boghossian, and Helen Pluckrose in 2017/18¹². What these affairs both produced were hoax studies that were published in academic journals because they followed an ideological and identitarian concept based on the SOKE in academic publishing, reflecting a lack of logic, reason, and academic rigor. This itself is the SOKE in action, that individuals were able to infiltrate these journals using hoax knowledge and epistemology, playing the oppressive game, and being accepted into peer-reviewed academic journals. The New York Times op-ed is one thing, academic journals are the basis for law, policy, and societal outcomes expanding from the university. These affairs will forever set a precedent and shine a light on the SOKE within research in colleges and universities, making them important additions to the scholarship of stifling identitarianism.

What does this all mean for knowledge and epistemology? Well the SOKE creates a knowledge vacuum through staunch identitarianist binaries of rights and wrongs based on illogical and unreasonable concepts that fly in the face of interdisciplinarity. As we know, interdisciplinarity can allow these identitarian concepts be introduced, but they must be consistently challenged and critiqued in order to find actionable answers to new and logical ways of thinking.  Much like the Christian sects of the Medieval Era during The Great Schism used the SOKE to oppress knowledge through religion, the universities continue the method of the SOKE towards logical, rational knowledge and epistemology in the suit of winning the identitarian Olympics. This must be critiqued, challenged, and rallied against in the battle of knowledge.

Beyond Ideology: The Trap of Benevolent Despotism

In interdisciplinary fairness, I must acknowledge my previous bashing of identitarianism and search for why this is such a prevailing method within the institutions. Sure, I could pick on the identitarianism and say it is a problem towards our interdisciplinarity. However, I would be doing my ethos a disservice if I did not take a broad look at why this is in the institution. Serious discussion needs to happen with regard to social, political, and economic equality in the frame of social justice learning through the understanding of true social justice. Rational understanding of social justice can be traced back to John Rawls, providing a proportional understanding to the social union towards good and justice through utilitarian methods for the whole of the greater good¹³. Unfortunately, that notion has moved towards a concept of a social union and a social justice towards identity and radicalized ideals for reform rather than a nuanced discussion. There is a way to achieve a rational and meaningful understanding of progressive or social justice values but has moved away from this concept.

How would this move be described? In 1997, Robert Kaplan published an article in The Atlantic called Was Democracy Just A Moment describing the benefits of anti-democracy, and authoritarian doctrines as a positive in nations such as Uganda, Venezuela, Colombia, and China. He concludes with a neo-Marxist premise saying that democracy perpetuates a class struggle between the new bourgeoise and the new proletariat, along with mirroring the concept of democracy as a form of modern oligarchy¹⁴. Of course, anyone who knows about the history of the authoritarian regimes of the past, and if you look into these countries, you will find the failure of these authoritarian regimes leading to death and economic destruction. For example, Venezuela and Colombia after the fall of their democracies saw economic failure especially in the oil rich country of Venezuela under Chavez through corruption and social engineering, leading to economic devaluation, shortages of food supplies, and a rampant epidemic of child malnutrition¹⁵. Colombia have made strides considering recent elections of more centrist and conservative governments after the far-left Marxist group Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC), who were a militant group with funding through their operations of kidnap, ransom, and the production and distribution for murderous organizations such as the Medellin and Cali Cartels of cocaine trafficking fame¹⁶.

As for Uganda, he praises the work Yoweri Museveni after the troubling dictatorship of Idi Amin. However, Uganda has failed through Museveni through social and economic incompetence with political corruption, election rigging, and a spate of murders attributed to his government since he took power¹⁷. More recently, we see the economic failure in China due to a pandemic, along with the systematic sterilization and reformation of Uighur Muslims in the west of the country¹⁸. Unfortunately, this concept of Maoist-Marxist style of politics is pervasive inside the institutions without the interdisciplinary nuance of happenings in these countries with this ideology. Kaplan along with others really try to make an attempt for authoritarianism, less in the framework of totalitarian rule, but repackaged as some sort of centralized governance towards perceived beneficial ideas accepting peace and benevolence. This is a fallacy as a call towards creating compassion through authoritarian rule will achieve this. The thought is a better central society than a liberalized individual society in prosperous nations. What this reflects in these compassionate individuals, are that they are falling victim to the fallacy of the benevolent despot.

The benevolent despot or the ‘kind dictator’ usually makes the argument that ‘Soviet Union wasn’t true communism’, or ‘if things are done better authoritarian governments could work’, this is an illogical framework for understanding considering the concept that apparently ‘challenges power’, creates ultimate power from one or a group of flawed human beings. Universities, although not outwardly, are using these empty ideologies becoming despots with teaching and policies proliferated throughout the institution. For example, the policies in the college and university system allow their power to maintain tuition charges for education that is not up to standard for a proficient level of learning. One example is the case of Harvard who will continue to charge $50,000 for tuition for online classes, even though pure online is not proven to provide the best education for young adults^{19 20}, solely for the fact about a virus that is not dangerous towards university aged students. Another is the recent induction of mandatory diversity and inclusion seminars leading to strict policies which have been rendered highly ineffective because of the industrialized and irrational nature of the process²¹.

An outwardly and expansive thinking in an interdisciplinary way is the way to look at diversity and social justice outside of this knowledge vacuum. The lack of outwardly knowledge that is currently plaguing the universities and other institutions within our society creates a troubling precedent. What interdisciplinarity can do is outline the gaps of ‘benevolent despot’ thinking and provide logical and pragmatic discussion within education, or in government and economics. Logic and pragmatism attempts to embrace a true form of social justice or social unity and provide multiple ideals need to be explained and expanded on to find actionable answers to tough solutions; furthermore, colleges and universities need to embrace this nuanced lens in order for the academy to save their future as bastions of knowledge.

A Framework for the Future of Interdisciplinarity

So, what might be an actionable answer to the perception of interdisciplinarity inside colleges and universities; and the issues that are found behind the walls of the institution? One might observe the structures that make up a university – conceptually rather than physically. First, you have to look up what makes a university in the form of documentation and stakeholders:

1. Policy: education policy in the form of institutional or state mandate agreements with colleges and universities need to not only create interdisciplinarity policy, but introduce a codified resonance of interdisciplinarity inside the entire policy document. Preferably embracing the broad and liberalized ideals following rational and logical policy frameworks.
2. Accreditation: if policy does not want to embrace a rational approach in institutions, we must call upon institutions such as the International Network for Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (INQAAHE), or national organizations such as the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) and the Council on Occupational Education (COE) to protect the rational and liberalized concepts during accreditation reviews. Policy itself will not change the role, since the ‘workaround’ with policy can be found, but if those workarounds hurt accreditation and ultimately scholarship economics, this can produce change for the good.
3. Public Stance: using the public stance of consumer demand in a university framework can help change policy and accreditation. This comes from community and business leaders as well as influential members within society embracing the idea on the current challenges in the university, and not relying on the indoctrination of the current university identitarianism. This sends a message to colleges and universities to change their stance and provide liberalized education to which the market demands.

In closing, the role of the university needs to rely on the public want and public need based on liberalized concepts and rational thinking; because most people within a society are not elite-type individuals who embrace weird concepts such as ‘benevolent despotism’, they are regular people, and governmental policies should be reflective of a populist framework. Furthermore, the embrace of more interdisciplinarity within the learning of the institution can have a massive impact for good within life and society, which in truth is a real form of social justice. Sure, individuals would disagree saying that the university is currently doing this, however, when following the concepts from Eric Weinstein such as the GIN and DISC, or the concept of the SOKE, you will soon see these identitarian ideals fall under their own weight, and potentially set back learning, life, and society instead of progressing forwards.