  Disciplinary diversity is being recognized today as the key to establish a
vibrant academic environment with bigger potential for breakthroughs in
research and technology. However, the interaction of several factors including
policies, and behavioral attitudes put significant barriers on advancing
interdisciplinarity. A "cognitive rigidity" may rise due to reactive academic
lobbying favouring inbreeding. Here, we address, analyse and discuss a
mathematical model of lobbying and interdisciplinarity dynamics in Academia.
The model consists of four coupled non-linear Ordinary Differential Equations
simulating the interaction between three types of academic individuals and a
state reflecting the rate of knowledge advancement which is related to the
level of disciplinary diversity. Our model predicts a rich nonlinear behaviour
including multiplicity of states and sustained periodic oscillations resembling
the everlasting struggle between the "new" and the "old". The effect of a
control policy that inhibits lobbying is also studied. By appropriate
adjustment of the model parameters we approximated the jump/phase transitions
in breakthroughs in mathematical and molecular biological sciences resulted by
the increased flow of Russian scientists in the USA after the dissolution of
the Soviet Union starting in 1989, the launch of the Human Genome Project in
1992 and the Internet diffusion starting in 2000.
