Ferdinand Von Prondzynski, the President of DCU since 2000, is no ordinary academic. He spends much of his time these days twittering or blogging or updating his Facebook page and seems eager to put on record every thought in his head. However, it’s the stuff he doesn’t write about that is more interesting. With his ten years at DCU up next year, Ferdie’s name is being brandied about in relation to the upcoming vacancy an No 1 Grafton Street- the abode of Trinity College’s Provost. However, this may be out of VP’s reach and matters haven’t been helped by a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month on his handling of the controversial dismissal of a senior staff member. This is, in fact, only the latest in a number of such setbacks at DCU and given that the outgoing president – a one-time left wing firebrand – is an industrial relations law expert, its all getting rather embarrassing.
Having spent 10 years as an industrial relations lecturer at TCD from 1980 (before becoming Prof of Law at Hull University in 1991), the word is that the german-born von Prondzynski is anxious to return there to take the top job in Irish academia when Provost John Hegarty steps down in 2011. VP would certainly be the first incumbent of this post with Prussian blood, although there are numerous other characteristics that mark him apart from other senior academics here, such as his former membership of the British American Business Council (whose advisory board currently boasts the likes of James Murdoch of News Corp and Stephen Schwarzman, chairman of the Blackstone Group). VP is also a board member and shareholder of the Nasdaq-quoted Skillsoft e-learning company, last year earning him $140,000 if share options are taken into account. He also owns a large share in a castle outside Mullingar Co Westmeath – Knockdrin Castle – with the balance held by his family’s Isle of Man vehicle, Francmine Ltd.
Right now, however, what marks out von Prondzynski is the fact that he has got a drubbing from the Supreme Court. Not many observers were surprised at the decision arrived at by Justices Susan Denham, Hugh Geoghegan and Fidelma Macken, who upheld the 2007 High Court ruling of Justice Frank Clarke in favour of dismissed Prof Paul Cahill. The guesstimate for the total legal bill associated with the challenge is pushing €1.5M (DCU availed of the not inexpensive services of Arthux Cox) and, worryingly, this comes on top of other litigation which has also cost the northside college a few bob.
The DCU president – who is an acknowledged expert in industrial relations law – played a central role in the Cahill case as it was he who dismissed the biotechnology professor. Unfortunately for von Prondzynski, the Supreme Court has now ruled that proper procedures were not followed and ‘in the absence of such fair procedures the termination was not valid’. This setback comes right in the middle of an ongoing high profile dispute with another DCU lecturer, Sean O’ Nuallain who was the subject of a Rights Commissioner ruling in 2003 that he should be reinstated to a permanent position. This matter is now before the Employment Appeals Tribunal (EAT) where it has been generating plenty of headlines thanks in part to the aggressive nature of O’Nuallain’s performance and the introduction of John Gormley’s name into the proceedings last week. The EAT case bears a number of similarities to the Cahill case, focusing as it does on the manner in which von Prondzynski conducted affairs although there has been a little more spice evident here, with O’Nuallain having even made unsubstantiated allegations of Nazi Party links to von Prondzynski father, Hans, who arrived here in 1961 having served in the German army in WWII.
ROW
In 2007 von Prondzynski also found himself at the centre of an industrial row involving maths lecturer (now Professor) Jane Horgan, who claimed that she had been passed over in 2001 for the promotional post of associate professor but was discriminated on the grounds of gender. Although not centrally involved in making the decision of the promotion, VP had chaired the interview panel. An Equality Tribunal ruling in 2003 in Horgan’s favour was appealed to the Labour Court, which in 2007 found that Ms Horgan was the most qualified of the interviewees.
It is not only the decision made to hire and fire academics that has landed von Prondzynski in hot water but also the use of a college regulation governing dismissals that SIPTU claims was formally adopted by DCU in 2001 without its agreement. This issue went to the Labour Court in 2002 with SIPTU claiming that the objective of introducing the statute was to ‘reduce the influence of the Union’. The December 2002 ruling by Finbarr Flood highlighted ‘concerns in relation to the statute as written’ and recommended that the two sides enter into discussion under a facilitator. Bizarrely, seven years later there has been no progress on the matter despite the appointment of Labour lawyer Alex White as facilitator.
Such is the level of antagonism between von Prondzynski and the staff on this issue that last year SIPTU held a secret ballot which resulted in a motion of No confidence in the president being passed by 55% to 45%. Essentially SIPTU claims that the contentious statute allows the university to fire staff at minimal notice and this is an abuse of natural justice. Ironically, in his early years as an industrial relations lecturer in Trinity College in the 1980’s, VP was considered somewhere to the left of Karl Marx on trade union matters and earned himself the moniker ‘the Red Baron’.
For example, in 1985 he wrote a lengthy article for the Irish Times with Kader Asmal expressing concern at proposed changes in Irish labour law. His 1987 book, Freedom of Association and Industrial Relations, claimed labour legislation had been introduced in UK by Margaret Thatcher solely to boost business and ‘as a tool for….the weakening of trade unions and the withdrawal of the legal back-up on which unions were formerly able to rely’.
However, by 2002 VP’s views had changed radically and he was very much in favour of using industrial relations law to promote competitiveness, noting that ‘the traditional perspectives of labour law, with their focus on workers’ rights and collective organisation are in urgent need of review…this new model may need to take a more explicit and positive view of employer interests, and more particularly of the desirability of promoting business success’.
BLOG
As often is the case with such Damascene conversion, an author’s words can come back to haunt him and in the ongoing Employment Appeals case referred to above, O’ Nuallain’s barrister – Padraic Lyons – was able to quote liberally from von Prondzynski’s 1984 book Employment Law in order to undermine DCU’s own case.
These days VP’s views are often evident of his ‘President’s Blog’ which he updates twice daily, commentating on everything from academia to er, hats: ‘I grew up in a household with a lot of hats…recently have have started to creep back into the picture again. Often they are worn by rock stars such as Pete Doherty’. As Goldhawk noted recently (see Phoenix 6/11/09), VP is also an avid twitterer and no subject is deemed too irrelevant for comment from the €230,000 pa DCU president: ‘Today was the first day since – well, ever – that I was at work but had no appointment. Not one. Amazing”. Or for those more interested in his musings on hats and the like “Should we quietly drop the tie as a clothing item for men? I know some believe it makes men look neat, others wouldn’t miss it”.
Some observers wonder where the busy von Prondzynski finds the time for his social networking on Twitter, Facebook (naturally he is a huge fan) and the blogosphere. He has also started to pen a weekly column for the Irish Times, although steering clear of the controversial subjects like legal fees at DCU. Nor has he written about rumours that he fancies the job of TCD Provost. Certainly, his exit from DCU next year looks rather well timed in this context but TCD insiders say he has no chance given that the Provost is voted in by the academics, which makes it almost impossible for an outsider. Interestingly, however, there have been suggestions that the method of election may change for the 2011 run-off and, for example, a report from the Colin Hunt chaired steering group on development of higher education sector included a recommendation that external candidates should be encouraged to apply for the post of university president and that appointments should be made by governing bodies. Something else that could count against von Prondzynski in relation to TCD is his attack on the secret nature of a research tie-up with UCD announced earlier this year. The DCU prez was highly critical, claiming that the manner in which the deal was put together “destroys trust and confidence”.
That said, with research funding and international profile such significant factors for modern universities, it seems likely that John Hegarty’s successor at TCD will be anyone other than a scientist with a serious international reputation. The main job of a university president today is to raise funds and push the institution up the world rankings table. TCD recently broke into the top 50 while UCD has also made serious headway under Hugh Brady and now stands at 89. DCU, however remains well off the pace after a decade of von Prondzynski’s presidency and the 2009 Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings placed the northside university at 326.
This pedestrian performance may be behind VP’s desire to push through a merger of DCU with NUI Maynooth and the Royal College of Surgeons, something he hopes to be seen as his legacy, although time is clearly running out.
VP can’t complain about the conditions during which he has been in situ in Glasnevin (after returning from Hull in 2000), with plenty of funding coming from the Government through the likes of Science Foundation Ireland, while DCU has also been a significant beneficiary of Chuck Feeney’s millions, albeit mostly under Danny O’ Hare’s reign (von prondzynski has proved less successful at tapping philanthropists during his decade at DCU). Progress has been slow and various schemes dreamt up by VP have failed to make a difference, notably the decision to divide the disciplines into so-called ‘themes’ with titles such as ‘Internationalisation, Interculturalism and Social Development’. Difficulties quickly emerged, especially in recruiting ‘theme leaders’ (despite funding from Chuck Fenney) and the experiment is seen to have failed.
One notable success has been von Prondzynski refusal to allow the university get into serious debt and in this context the college stands out from the likes of, in particular, UCD and UCC, which are both in the red to the tune of around €15M. However, VP will not be pleased another statistic that emerged last week from the English Centre for Education and Employment Research, which found that DCU topped the list of Irish universities for too easily dishing out top-class degrees with around 20% of graduates in 2006/2007 getting a first class degree. This compares with 14% in TCD. Moreover, a separate statistic published recently by the Irish Times reveals that 39% of DCU students who began a science and technology degree course failed to progress to second year. This compares with 26% in UCD, despite the fact that DCU is regarded as the states ‘high tech’ university.
QUESTION MARKS
There are also some question marks over von Prondzynski’s strategy for DCU. While the focus has previously been on science/biotech end of things (and the addition of nursing fits in here), the president recently launched a law degree course. This is despite the fact that at a symposium in TCD just three years ago, he claimed that Ireland needs “fewer law graduates and less litigation”.
So what now for VP ? Those who know him say he absolutely believes that he could land the Trinity job in 2011 but those who know Trinity say this is a pipe dream. He has created a media persona par excellence through his online activity and the Irish Times bleatings -all of which have increased in intensity in the last few months. VP has also proved popular with the Government and was appointed to the board of the National Competitiveness Council. However, his copybook has been blotted by the industrial relations mess he is leaving behind in DCU (particularly this month’s Supreme Court judgement) and the failure of the university to do much more than tread water under his presidency.
Of course, the 55 year old VP has plenty of hobbies apart from twittering – notably photography, a passion he shares with DCU’s head of strategic planning, Gordon McConnell, who recently became von Prondzynski’s fellow director on the board of Knockdrin Estates Ltd. This is the company that owns his Westmeath castle, purchased by Hans and Irene von Prondzynski (originally Countess Grote) when they arrived here from Germany in the early 1960s.
It is unlikely that VP is ready to retire to the country just yet but equally his plans for the next phase of his career may have come unstuck in recent months. Maybe the best thing for curious VO followers to do is keep an eye on his Facebook page or tune into his tweets.
Phoenix Magazine – Affairs of the Nation
Reply:
Dear sir,
I think when you’re in the public eye you have to accept a certain amount of shit in the media, and I don’t complain about that. But I do need to correct your comments about DCU’ s standing, as this affects other people also. DCU’s position in the global rankings in 2009 is not 326 (that was 2008), but 278. Furthermore, when I became President we weren’t in the top 500 at all, and probably nowhere near it. In 2006 we entered at 440, and as I said, by 2009we’ve got to 278. No stagnation or languishing there. Furthermore, in the global top 300 we’re by far the newest university, no other university anywhere of our age has got that far. We have also topped the list for research income in Irish universities – for example the two largest ever research grants from Science Foundation Ireland have both gone to DCU. Not particularly my achievement, it’ s that of the whole DCU community.
Cheers,
Professor Ferdinand von Prondzynski
President Dublin City University
'Watchdog' on Higher Education in Ireland 