[English translation of „Tárgyalás után, tárgyalás előtt II” blogpost on adamzoltan.hu. For the original, see https://adamzoltan.hu/2025/03/09/targyalas-utan-targyalas-elott-ii/]
In the latest hearing of the employment lawsuit against Corvinus University of Budapest on 17 February, the court heard three university leaders: the university’s former head of labour law services, Zsuzsanna Borbás, currently head of legal and procurement services, Zsuzsanna Csentericsné Arnold, the former head of HR, who is currently serving her notice period, and Ágnes Zsóka, university professor and former vice-rector for academic development. All three played an active role in my dismissal almost a year and a half ago.
Zsuzsanna Borbás, as head of labour law services, assisted in the irregularity proce
edings led by Chancellor Ákos Domahidi and Deputy Rector Ágnes Zsóka, following which the university terminated my employment with immediate effect. The ‘supplementary finding’, which was part of the decision closing the procedure and was signed by Domahidi and Zsóka, and which dealt specifically with me, stated that I had refused to cooperate with the university administration by not sending the emails requested by the Chancellor and by using a disrespectful tone in correspondence about this. On the basis of these two allegations, I was dismissed from my post on 24 October 2023 by Head of Institute Klára Major and Acting Rector Lajos Szabó. My letter of dismissal was countersigned by Head of HR Ms Zsuzsanna Csenterics Arnold. Interestingly, like Mrs Csenterics and Professor Zsóka, Domahidi no longer holds a senior position at Corvinus. According to his LinkedIn profile, from January 2025 he is working as an advisor to the board of trustees of the university’s foundation, chaired by Chairman Zsolt Hernádi, CEO and President of oil and gas giant Mol.
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Zsuzsanna Borbás, like the university leaders heard in the previous hearings, claimed in her testimony that I did not cooperate with the irregularity procedure as I did not comply with the Chancellor’s repeated request to send two emails I had read out at my hearing. These emails were exchanged with the coordinator of the microeconomics course, which was at the centre of the university ethics proceedings I initiated in February 2023. By her own admission, Ms Borbás closely followed my correspondence with the Chancellor (of which she was copied as a participant in the irregularity procedure) and did not find that there was any misunderstanding between us. The Chancellor’s demand was clear and I did not comply with it, so I did not cooperate with the procedure, Ms Borbás said.
In reality, the following happened. First, on 29 September, I received an email from Domahidi asking me to send him and „the decision-makers in the investigation” the emails I had quoted at my hearing in the irregularity procedure nearly a month earlier. (These emails I had exchanged with the subject coordinator after we had been approached by the student involved in the ethics procedure with his request for an examination.) Oddly enough, I received two emails from the Chancellor at once, as the first one „contained an editing error.” This was on a Friday, so I thought I would reply within two working days, which was the general university norm in not particularly urgent cases. The Chancellor, however, did not wait for my reply and wrote another letter on Tuesday morning, telling me to send the emails no later than 12 noon on Wednesday 4 October. On Tuesday evening, 3 October, I sent him the following reply, with copies to Acting Rector Lajos Szabó, President of the University Anthony Radev, and Head of Institute Klára Major:
„Dear Mr Chancellor, dear Ákos,
I am surprised to receive your repeated correspondence. It is not clear to me why you need to exchange emails with my colleagues and on what legal basis you are asking me to do so. As I indicated at my oral hearing, I have serious reservations about the whole investigation. I have the impression that this is an alibi investigation: it is an alibi for the university to conduct another investigation to spread the blame, rather than to deal with the very serious abuses that the ethics investigation has revealed. The possible consequences of this investigation that you are now conducting are not clear, and neither you nor your colleagues have so far given me a clear and reassuring answer on this.
I continue to find it extremely problematic that the investigation initiated by the Deputy Rector-General in June is now being carried out in the next academic year. This circumstance precludes any lessons from the investigation from being applied within a reasonable timeframe for the next academic year (which is currently under way). This strengthens my suspicion that the investigation you are conducting is not aimed at improving the functioning of the university, but at spreading responsibility.
Those of you who have read the ethics investigation should know that it contains extremely serious allegations of mismanagement and failings in the management of the university that give rise to suspicions of criminality. You should also know that it is not possible to keep all this secret indefinitely, because university leaders are public figures who must account for their actions to both the university and the public. The university administration, by comparison, is pursuing a policy of keeping its head in the sand, which is seriously jeopardising the interests of the university by undermining its professional and moral authority.
As long as the university administration does not confront this and address the issue of the responsibility of the university administrators involved in ethics investigations, it is difficult to consider any other investigation into the series of acts involved in ethics investigations as being in good faith.
Sincerely,
Zoltán Ádám”
I have shared this response letter, along with the email request letter from the Chancellor, on the university union’s Facebook group so that my union colleagues are aware of it. The next day, on the morning of 4 October, I asked my subject coordinator colleague Vyacheslav Arbuzov if it would be acceptable for him to forward our correspondence to the Chancellor. I asked this because our correspondence contained several email exchanges, not just the ones I read out at my hearing. I interpreted the Chancellor’s request as meaning that he wanted to receive all emails related to the student’s case, and I thought that I should only send them to him if my colleague agreed.
After my subject coordinator colleague agreed to this, I sent Domahidi the emails I had identified from his request by the deadline. This email stream also included emails from Vyacheslav Arbuzov and Klára Major, the head of the institute, as we were discussing not only the response to the student’s request, but also the student’s mother’s visit to the university. However, the two emails I exchanged with my colleague immediately after receiving the student’s request were not included. I did not notice or know about this until 24 October, the day of my immediate dismissal, when Vyacheslav Arbuzov came to my room after my dismissal to discuss what had happened. It was from him that I learned that the Chancellor had also asked him for the emails I had read out, and that they were indeed not included in the stream of letters I had sent to the Chancellor on 4 October.
That was indeed my mistake, but there was no malice in it. As it turned out, the Outlook application used in the university email system had split the emails we exchanged with my colleagues following my student’s request into two separate email threads. The two email threads had the same ‘originating email’: the email sent to me by the student. When I complied with the Chancellor’s request on 4 October, I did not have the transcript of my 6 September hearing on the irregularity procedure, so I worked from memory and tried to send the Chancellor the email stream that gave the most complete picture of the correspondence we instructors had on the matter. That is why I sent him, as part of the email stream, the email that my boss, Klara Major, had written about the matter, assuring me of her agreement. The head of the institute wrote to say that she was very sorry that I had to go through all this and that she agreed with my reply to the student and my reply to the student’s mother. She also asked me to let her know the next time I am in a similar situation or if the student’s mother is harassing me again at the university. Finally, she assured me that I was not alone in this matter. Having read through the emails exchanged on the matter, I obviously thought it would not hurt if the Chancellor was aware of this letter from my boss, which is probably why I chose this email thread.
The transcript of my hearing on the irregularity procedure was only sent to me the next day, 5 October at 17:05 by Zsuzsanna Borbás, one day before the final deadline of 6 October at 18:00 given by the Chancellor. At that time, however, I had no time to deal with it in any meaningful way, because I had four classes to teach on the 6th, and I had to prepare for them. I therefore did not get very far in reading the transcript. I thought I would study it in detail later, when I had more time, and let them know if I had any objections to it.
Domahidi replied to my email of the previous day on the morning of 5 October. He wrote to say that he regretted that I had not sent him the emails he had requested, despite his second request. From his letter it appeared that the Chancellor had simply not noticed the emails I had forwarded. He did not respond to them at all, while he explained to me the legal context of the irregularity procedure in view of my ‘reply message’. However, the ‘reply message’ to which Mr Domahidi replied was obviously the letter I had sent two days earlier, on 3 October, not the letter of 4 October containing the emails exchanged with my colleagues. I therefore wrote to Domahidi in the early afternoon of 5 October:
„Dear Chancellor, dear Ákos.
Your letters always seem to contain unexpected elements, surprising twists and turns. One such surprising turn is that, as Chancellor of the University, you, as a representative of the University, can instruct me, a member of the academic body, to do anything. I was not aware of this before. I think that if, for any reason, you consider it necessary – and I assume that this is possible within the limited context of your investigation – you should inform the head of institute who exercises the rights of employer vis-à-vis me, in this case Dr Klára Major, to whom I am adding a copy of this letter.
On the other hand, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that I sent the correspondence you requested to you and your colleagues yesterday at 11.59 p.m. (i.e. within the deadline you set). You are obviously aware of this, as you sent me your email this morning in response to the letter I sent to you and your colleagues containing the exchange of letters. In this case, however, it is not clear why you claim in your letter today that I did not comply with their request and provide them with the email exchange.
Finally, I would like to point out that you have not managed to allay my reservations about the irregularity investigation. Everything you write would have been credible if this investigation had taken place months ago, before the start of this academic year, and if the facts and results of the investigation had been made public to the entire university community. In that case, the conclusions of the inquiry would be of real use to the university. However, this would require open and honest communication from you and the entire university administration, both in relation to the ethics procedures that I have initiated and in relation to other related investigations.
Yours sincerely,
Zoltán Ádám”
Domahidi responded to this letter the next day, October 6, at 2:12 p.m., and wrote verbatim that „from our correspondence, there appears to be a misunderstanding between us regarding the requested correspondence.” In this letter, the Chancellor already acknowledged that I had sent him emails on 4 October („we have registered the correspondence sent”), but added that it was not the full correspondence quoted at my hearing, and continued to request that I send him the emails I had read at my hearing in their entirety. He set a deadline of four o’clock that afternoon. I sent the following reply message at 15:16 on 6 October:
„Dear Mr Chancellor, dear Ákos,
I’m teaching until 5 today (I’m only writing because it’s a break), so I’m sure I won’t be able to send anything else until 4. But to be honest, I’m not sure what you mean. As far as I know, I have no other correspondence with my colleagues that responds to the situation. If you can be a bit more specific about what you mean, I’d be happy to look into it this weekend.
Sincerely,
Zoltán”
Domahidi replied to this email at 16:07, without even mentioning my suggestion, so that I could look into the letters he was looking for over the weekend, in a relaxed atmosphere. The new deadline he gave me was 6pm that evening – while he knew from my letter that I was teaching until 5pm, and he was also aware that it was Friday, when it is not usual to give assignments with a 6pm deadline that evening at the university. Hence, when I read his email after my classes, it didn’t make me feel cheerful and liberated. I went back to my university office, sat down in front of my computer after four ninety-minute classes, with the fatigue of a week’s work and the stress of months of arguing with the university administration, and tried to figure out what Domahidi wanted from me. I didn’t succeed. I did not notice that the two emails read out at my hearing on the irregularity procedure were not included in the email stream I sent on Wednesday. Two other emails, also read out at my hearing, were included, including the joint „originating email” of the two email streams sent to me by the student involved in the ethics procedure, but not the two items requested by the Chancellor. Three minutes before the six-minute deadline, at 17:57, I wrote this to Domahidi:
„Dear Chancellor, dear Ákos!
I have had a look at the transcript of my hearing sent by Zsuzsi. (Thank you Zsuzsi, I haven’t had time to read it all in detail yet, if I have any requests for changes or comments, I will let you know.) The emails I read out at the hearing are exactly the same as the ones I forwarded to you at 11.59 pm on 4 October. Word for word, the transcript is identical to what is in the emails forwarded on 4 October. If you need me to verify this, please do not hesitate to contact me and I will be happy to show it to you in person.
In the meantime, thank you for allowing me to deal with this on Friday from 5 to 6, after four 90-minute classes. It was obviously important for the investigation. If I have any Saturday morning or Sunday evening deadlines, please let me know.
Best regards,
ÁZ”
There was no further reply from Domahidi, and the next time the university management communicated with me was two and a half weeks later, at the time of my immediate dismissal. Neither my immediate boss, Klára Major, nor the university’s HR manager, Zsuzsanna Csentericsné Arnold, nor the labour law expert, Zsuzsanna Borbás (with the latter two I had regular working contacts as an advocacy leader), considered it important to communicate anything to me until then.
In her testimony, Zsuzsanna Arnold Csentericsné said that, as HR manager, she supported Major Klára in her decision regarding me. She said that Major considered that my conduct was not compatible with the organisational culture defined by the principles of collegiality and respect and therefore considered the most severe sanction under employment law to be applicable to me, with which Mrs Csenterics and Ms Borbás agreed. According to Mrs Csenterics, there would have been serious consequences if the university had decided otherwise: there was a risk that my style of communication would have become accepted and that university staff would no longer carry out management instructions. According to Mrs Csenterics, at the time of my dismissal, which she herself had attended at the request of Klára Major, I had tried to make the situation difficult by my violent emotions and inappropriate behaviour. She claimed that I had insulted her, but she could not remember what exactly I had said. Perhaps because I do not remember to have insulted her either.
According to the testimony of former Vice-Rector Ágnes Zsóka, everything was in order with regard to the irregularity procedure in which she was involved and the university’s actions in relation to me. She found nothing strange in the fact that I received the transcript of my hearing on 6 September on 5 October, the day before the end of the twice-extended deadline for the irregularitiy procedure, long after Domahidi had asked me to send the two emails quoted in my hearing. He also said that it was OK that the Chancellor did not respond substantively to my proposal to extend the deadline to the weekend: extending the deadline by two hours was, in her view, an appropriate response in the circumstances.
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The witnesses proposed to be heard by the university – former and current university leaders – all presented the same narrative to the court. In short, that the Chancellor and the Vice-Rector, who were investigating irregularities following the announcement by the Acting Rector, were conducting the procedure to improve the university’s operations, which I had obstructed by not sending the two emails requested by the Chancellor and by using an impermissible tone in our correspondence with him. Until now, I have been explaining why this argument is false. Finally, I would like to add that the immediate precursor to what happened was the closure of the ethics procedures I initiated, based on absurd legal arguments, which covered up the ethical responsibility of the university leaders. The indirect precursor is the radical change in the model of university governance that has taken place in the course of the university transformation that began in 2019. The entire university was organised into a strict top-down hierarchy, with everyone within it subject to the approval of their superiors, while democratically elected, bottom-up organized university bodies were either abolished (such as faculty councils) or placed under the direct control of the university management (such as the Senate).
As a result of this transformation, the university has essentially become a company: a member of the Mol group, increasingly adopting its organisational culture and rules of operation. The university’s president, Anthony Radev, a board member of Mol and WizzAir and former head of the Budapest office of McKinsey, has become the university’s absolute master. The most infamous moment of his reign was when, at the end of a meeting in a university institute, he jokingly elbowed a colleague who was asking him questions about the university’s operations and criticized university conduct, and then added blandly: „you don’t have to fucking work here!” This is the man who led Corvinus University of Budapest for five years, in 2019-2024. And those who slowly but surely drove the whole university into his yoke, eliminated all grassroots resistance and removed the last institutional guarantees of academic autonomy, after I had indicated as an employee representative and a whistleblower in the ethical procedures that I did not accept the university conditions that had been developed this way, removed me from my job with extraordinary notice. Becasue they could not have done so by giving me a regular notice, as I was protected by the union.
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On Monday, 10 March, the court will hear three witnesses proposed by us: Vyacheslav Arbuzov, assistant professor, coordinator of the microeconomics course involved in the ethics proceedings, Péter Kerényi, assistant professor, member of the university union’s management, and Mária Dunavölgyi, assistant professor, president of the Corvinus Employees’ Council. I hope that this will give a chance to the court to evaluate what happened not only from the point of view of the university management, and that my former colleagues representing the employees will also have a chance to express their views on university relations and the position of an interest group leader like myself. The fourth witness on Monday will be Tibor Sopronyi, the university’s IT manager, who will be heard by the court at the suggestion of the university side. I look forward to hearing their testimonies.