Well-educated barbarians or…?

I happened to find an article on Internet, written by a Swedish social scientist, Bo Rothstein, 2006: ”The Constitution in a Multicultural Society” (my translation from Swedish). Rothstein quotes Yehuda Bauer, one of the leading scientists about the Holocaust, when he explaines what he regards as the most decisive reason why such an extreme annihilation could take place in a culturally developed nation like Germany.

Bauer’s explanation is that many of the most well educated in the German society – doctors, university teachers etc – became members of the Nazi party because they were promised good future prospects and status. When those ”intellectuals” started to collaborate with the party about the genocide it became easy to convince the rest of the people of the necessity to take part in the murder in order to achieve an utopian future.

Bauer, and Rothstein, wonder of course if we – the societies of today – still are producing ”technically competent barbarians at our universities”?

I would like to quote Ragnar Ohlsson, who several years ago wrote a definition of the Swedish word ”bildning”, which is a broader concept than just ”education” and in English maybe best could be translated into ”enlightenment”:

”Bildning” can be understood as the shaping of yourself into a social human being. ”Bildning” lead to a kind of general life preparedness. You are ”bildad” if you have a wider perspective on your life, if you can see it in a wider context than the narrow everyday life, if you can see the relations between yourself and the rest of the world, the biosphere, other human beings – now living, dead since long time and future generations. But ”bildning” is not only intellectual skills and understandings; ability to take action and ethical qualities are essential elements in that shaping of your personality ”bildning” is supposed to provide. (My translation.)

Is this a vision that characterizes modern universities?