The ETH has demanded a counterstatement («Gegendarstellung»). It is situated at the bottom of this article.

Sunday morning, October 22, 2017. The mild late summer came to an abrupt end overnight. Still lying in her bed, Marcella Carollo reached for her tablet, checked the online news portal – and felt her heart leap into her throat.

«My first thought?» Roughly a year later, in December 2018, Carollo is sitting in her living room and the atmosphere is bleak. The landscape outside her window is firmly in the grip of the fog, and the neighbors’ house is barely visible. The shutters of her home in the countryside outside of Zürich are usually kept closed anyway. The house is richly furnished with heavy carpets, antique furniture and black-and-white photos.

«At first there was just emptiness», she recalls, «then a stabbing pain. I had trouble breathing and it was as if, in a matter of seconds, I was being sucked into a deep hole. My husband held me in his arms, I don’t know for how long. At some point, my first thoughts formed: How can we go on like this? Can we even go on at all?»

What Carollo read on that Sunday morning changed her life forever: «Scandal at ETH: Professor Harasses Students» was the headline in big bold letters on the front page of the NZZ am Sonntag. The newspaper gave the professor a fictitious name to render her anonymous, but it only took a couple of clicks online for anyone to figure out who «Gabriela M.» really was: Marcella Carollo, 54 at the time, a leading member of the faculty of the Institute for Astrophysics at ETH in Zürich since 2002 – was reportedly a bully.

The article stated that for more than a decade, she allegedly harassed her subordinates, referred to women as weaklings who should spend less time on their make-up and more on their research, and micromanaged everything under the sun while demanding superhuman commitment. «I consider this a dark episode in my life», the article quoted one of the former doctoral candidates as saying.

The news made headlines around the world. «Der Spiegel», the «Süddeutsche Zeitung», «BuzzFeed» and «The Wire» all reported on the allegations of professional misconduct at ETH.

The evidence against Carollo appears overwhelming. Between December 2016 and May 2017, current and former doctoral students and postdocs wrote a total of 12 secret testimonials outlining the ordeals that they experienced at ETH. They all shared similar stories. Astronomy professor Marcella Carollo reportedly harassed her subordinates, placed excessive expectations on their availability and engaged in unfruitful discussions until late in the night.

«Several of us at the time were talking of ourselves sarcastically as ‹their slaves›, which described our feelings pretty much to the point», according to one of the testimonials. In another account: «This woman steals your work, your dreams and your life. She plays with you like a puppet in a theater, and then she breaks you down.»

When fragments of the testimonials were leaked to the public – despite strict secrecy – on that Sunday in October 2017, ETH suddenly became the scene of «harassment» and «abuse of power» in the upper echelons of academia.

The institution still hasn’t been able to shake this reputation, but now, presumably, it has acted to clear the air. On March 14, ETH requested Carollo’s dismissal. It would be the first time in the 164-year history of this institution of higher education that a professor would have to take leave of their position in this way.

Does that close the matter, as ETH officials hope?

Republik has been investigating this case for half a year, has spoken with the individuals involved, read the minutes of hearings and pored over emails and letters – roughly 3000 pages of documents in all, including 10 of the 12 secret testimonials that are only accessible to the inner-most ETH circle. Carollo is not a member of this select group. And to this day, she has been denied access to the original wording of the allegations against her.

Is the professor guilty?

Or is she the victim of a «vindictive doctoral candidate», as she says?

Or does the truth lie somewhere in between these two extremes?

Nobody knows for sure because no one has mediated the conflict or investigated the allegations: neither the head of department, the office of the vice rector, the college administration nor the external administrative investigation. Professor Carollo’s guilt appeared to be a foregone conclusion right from the start.

The investigation by Republik has exposed systematic failure at ETH. An examination of the process leading to Carollo’s dismissal reveals serious administrative and procedural deficiencies for an institution that is proud to rank among the world’s top 10 universities.

The Case of the Abusive Professor – an ETH Case.

Over the past two years, Carollo has not once benefited from the principle of innocent until proven guilty. The professor has never had a genuine opportunity to explain herself and her work, to concede mistakes and make improvements. The conflict between a doctoral student and the professor degenerated into chaos as players at all levels of the institutional hierarchy began to pursue their own interests – and even ended up toppling the university president.

Ultimately, they could only agree on one thing: Carollo, one of the most cited scientists at ETH Zürich, had to go. Now, she is to be dismissed – without official prior warning – although there are no provisions for such action in the university’s personnel statutes.

But Carollo is fighting back. The final report from the administrative investigation states that Carollo showed little understanding for the procedure and never recognized that she was part of the problem. And to underscore her position, Carollo speaks for hours and days on end, in an endless volley of words. The 56-year-old insists that she has done nothing wrong. «All I want is for the truth to come to light», she says.

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How could it have come to this point? The following reconstruction describes in six acts how one of the most renowned institutions in Switzerland, subsidized to the tune of 1.3 billion Swiss francs (1.15 billion euros) of taxpayers’ money every year, maneuvered itself into one of the most humiliating situations in its history.

The leading roles are played by:

Marcella Carollo, professor of astronomy : allegedly harassed doctoral students, leading to calls for her dismissal

Elisabetta Marignano (not her real name), doctoral student : complains to the ombudsman about her adviser, Carollo, and sets everything in motion

Wilfred van Gunsteren, ombudsman : is determined to push for ethical standards at ETH and plays a highly active role in the so-called «Carollo case»

Antonio Togni, vice rector : is a staunch advocate of better supervision for doctoral students and sides with the ombudsman, van Gunsteren

Rainer Wallny, deputy head of the physics department : reorganizes the physics department and emerges as one of the few winners in the Carollo case

Kevin Schawinski, assistant professor of astronomy : is striving for a full professorship and levels serious allegations against Carollo

Simon Lilly, professor of astronomy and Carollo’s husband : is never accused of any misconduct, but is nevertheless dragged down with his wife

Lino Guzzella, ETH president (2015–2018) : amid allegations that he tried to «sweep things under the carpet», is forced to forgo a second term in office in the wake of the scandal

Joël Mesot, ETH president (since 2019): serves as Guzzella’s successor and has to quickly reach a decision in the Carollo case

By the end of this story, ETH’s reputation will be severely tarnished. Some of its doctoral students will have lost their enthusiasm for academia, and one of its professors will be out of a job. And the president – shocked by the revelations made by Republik – will call a press conference at short notice on Thursday, March 14, 2019, and apologize to all the doctoral students who have been treated without respect.

The venerable ETH, which ranks among the best research institutions in the world, will be shaken to its very foundations.

Act One: A Doctoral Student Rebels

This story begins with two women, both of whom are Italians. In addition to their origins, they share a great passion for astronomy. Exactly one year later, one of the two, Marcella Carollo, will rise to dubious notoriety as the ETH professor who allegedly harasses her students. The other woman, who we’ll call Elisabetta Marignano, will reap praise as the doctoral student whose courage was instrumental in bringing to light a case of professional misconduct and abuse of power.

During the summer of 2016, everything seemed perfectly fine. Marignano was a doctoral candidate at the Institute for Astronomy and apparently had a cordial relationship with her adviser, Marcella Carollo. Emails between the two often ended on a friendly note with abbraccio, the Italian word for hug. On Marignano's birthday, the professor organized a cake and sang along with the other researchers at the institute.

In order to complete her doctorate within the prescribed four-year time limit, Marignano was tasked with evaluating digital images of 40 million galaxies as part of an international collaboration called the Dark Energy Survey. But she only had a vague grasp of the programs and lacked the astrophysical knowledge to develop her own analysis software, at least according to her adviser, Carollo.

In Carollo’s eyes, Marignano had been out of her depth ever since her hiring one-and-a-half years earlier. In a bid to help her, Carollo sat down with the student and analyzed her strengths and weaknesses and recommended what books to read and which lectures to attend.

Marignano saw things differently and felt that Carollo should have been more supportive: «She was very aggressive and treated me very badly saying that my brain doesn’t have any logic (...) and that I should ‹go and do philosophy instead of physics›», as she recounted in her testimonial, in which she would later reveal to the relevant ETH authorities what she viewed as the scandalous situation at the institute.

Speaking through her lawyer, Marignano declined to be interviewed by Republik, and she did not respond to a list of questions submitted by email.

In October 2016, the conflict between the doctoral student and her adviser came to a head. Carollo no longer believed that Marignano would complete her doctorate. The professor said that she was progressing too slowly to finish within four years, and perhaps six years might not even be enough, which is the maximum amount of time that university regulations allow students to pursue a doctorate.

Carollo was distressed over the situation. Although Marignano had not transferred to ETH from a top-ranking university, she had received excellent grades while studying for her master’s degree. Carollo saw in her a young woman who deserved a chance – and the student reminded her of herself in her younger days: After studying biophysics, Carollo’s financial situation had forced her to work for a number of years as a high school teacher, and then as a software developer. It was only then that she was able to pursue an academic career – and only because a professor of astronomy, whom she had met by chance, offered her an opportunity to pursue a doctorate.

The Situation Escalates

Carollo decided to use an employee performance review to confront her doctoral student about her lack of progress and, working together, establish new objectives and deadlines: a last chance for Marignano, but also a formal step that would allow her to terminate the young woman’s employment if she failed to produce results. In doing so, she was acting upon the recommendation of Rainer Wallny, the deputy head of the physics department and former director of studies.

In 2013, one of Carollo’s doctoral students had exceeded the maximum study period, requiring six-and-a-half years instead of four years, which was only possible thanks to a special exception granted by the rector. According to Carollo, Wallny wanted to avoid a similar situation, so he coolly instructed Carollo to decide at an earlier date whether a candidate was capable of completing a doctorate within the prescribed period of time.

The two women’s assessments of each other during the performance review couldn’t have been more widely divergent. The doctoral student praised the professor across the board, saying that Carollo did a great job of looking after her students, and that she motivated them and was always willing to find solutions to problems. The professor, though, stuck to her guns and said that the doctoral student’s performance was inadequate. Marignano was totally crushed.

The student did her best to provide the results for an initial publication, but Carollo remained unconvinced by them. Shortly before Christmas 2016, the professor informed her that she would not renew her contract beyond February. The situation escalated. The furious doctoral student accused her adviser of unprofessional supervisory conduct.

Up until this point in time, the conflict between Marignano and Carollo had been like many conflicts between doctoral candidates and professors. Not all doctoral students successfully complete their work and, according to the latest statistics, 86 out of 100 successfully complete the doctorate program at ETH.

In fact, ETH has established no quantitative criteria, such as a specific number of publications or research results, that would qualify a candidate for a doctoral degree – nor does it rely on committees or even a second adviser for doctoral students, as is prescribed for instance at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale (EPFL) in Lausanne. The disparity in power between professors and students is huge, and advisers serve as both the judges and executioners of their doctoral candidates.

This state of affairs is dangerous for doctoral students and professors alike. Without clearly defined criteria, when irreconcilable differences arise it remains impossible to unequivocally decide whether the students lack the necessary academic skills and diligence – or whether professors have placed unrealistic demands on their candidates and failed to advise and supervise them properly.

But what differentiates the conflict between Marignano and Carollo from other academic clashes is that this candidate refused to accept failure and decided instead to take a stand against her adviser.

On Jan. 9, 2017, Marignano entered the office of Wilfred van Gunsteren, the ETH ombudsman. Together with his colleague Maryvonne Landolt, van Gunsteren serves as a point of contact for internal conflicts that cannot be resolved with direct dialogue, as well as suspicions of improper conduct. This is precisely the type of conflict that Marignano reported.

Van Gunsteren found her accounts shocking, so he asked the doctoral student to put her allegations in writing. In her testimonial, Marignano writes: «I realized I am victim of psychological abuse by my own supervisor. The amount of offenses I try to overcome everyday is suffocating my work and my own life, to the point that I decided to ask for help and search for another supervisor.»

The list of allegations that Marignano brought to bear against her professor covers six pages. But this time around, there was no mention of the professor’s abilities to motivate or her willingness to take a keen interest in her doctoral students, which had only recently been much-lauded by Marignano. Instead, the student described in anecdote-rich detail how Carollo had allegedly harassed her.

Once, she said, the professor admonished her to waste less time on make-up and nail polish and, instead of wearing fine clothing, to don a jogging suit, like her officemate.

On another occasion, she wrote that Carollo refused to bring forward a meeting because Marignano was suffering from menstrual cramps – and had waived aside her request by quipping that men didn’t have such problems, so women couldn’t afford to have them either.

The ombudsman was appalled. He backed the doctoral student’s plan to look for a new adviser and offered his support.

The first act had been launched.

Over the next four weeks, the ombudsman received nine additional reports on Carollo, a total of 24 pages that paint a consistently disastrous image of the professor.

The testimonials are confidential, and Carollo has still not been able to see them. Republik has acquired copies of 10 of the 12 testimonials. The authors are former and current staff members of the Institute for Astronomy, and some of the accounts go back a number of years. The ombudsman later wrote to the school administration that «under no circumstances should the reports be shown to MC (Marcella Carollo), as the people who wrote them would otherwise have to contend with professional repercussions and experience difficulties. The world of astronomers is not large.»

Ever since her appointment to ETH in 2002, Carollo had maintained a spotless personnel file, without a single entry. But now, within a very short period of time, nine complaints had landed on the ombudsman’s desk. This was no coincidence. Republik’s investigation shows that both the doctoral student and the ombudsman contacted former doctoral candidates and postdocs and asked them to write testimonials. When confronted about this, neither van Gunsteren nor Marignano were willing to comment.

In their search for damaging material, the two received support from the vice rector for doctoral studies, Antonio Togni, who met with the doctoral student on Jan. 10, 2017, one day after she first contacted the ombudsman.

With his round glasses and gray beard, Togni, 60 at the time, is a fatherly figure. In addition to his core activity as a professor of chemistry, for the past nine months he’s been responsible for the doctorate program at ETH, from admissions all the way to the granting of degrees. He has a reputation as a good listener, as someone who takes students seriously.

There are no written records of his conversation with Marignano, and all we know is that he was shocked by what she told him. He reached the same conclusion as the ombudsman, van Gunsteren – namely that the doctoral student should apply for a change of adviser – and indicated that he would support such a move in his role as vice rector.

ETH Has No Memory

ETH actually has a sophisticated, multi-tiered conflict resolution process that is anchored in the regulations for doctoral studies. If significant differences of opinion between professors and doctoral students can’t be resolved, the department head is to mediate the conflict. If need be, the vice rector assumes the role of mediator. If that fails to produce results, the vice rector appoints an arbitration committee, whose membership is clearly defined. If this committee fails, the next step is decided by the rector, who may opt to assign a new adviser.

If this process in the conflict between Marignano and Professor Carollo had been followed to the letter, the situation might not have escalated the way it has. But ETH has been flouting its own rules.

Vice Rector Togni has declined to comment on the situation to Republik, stating that as long as the process of dismissing Carollo has not been completed, he views it as too sensitive a matter to discuss with representatives of the media.

Instead of first trying to mediate the conflict, Ombudsman van Gunsteren and Vice Rector Togni advised the doctoral student to switch advisers. Neither of them thought it was necessary to investigate the accuracy of the descriptions provided by the doctoral student.

Although nothing official had been brought against her, Marcella Carollo had a reputation for being «difficult person» – an ambitious and dogmatic control freak. According to the rumor mill, she had only been appointed to her position at ETH thanks to her husband, Simon Lilly, an outstanding British astronomer. When ETH negotiated a contract with Lilly in 2002, he reportedly demanded that his wife also be given a professorship, and the university agreed to sign them both on as part of its dual-career program. Carollo and her husband built up the institute together, but some gossip holds that he was actually the brains behind it.

The testimonials that the ombudsman received appeared to confirm the rumors that Carollo overcame her presumed inferiority complex by taking out her frustration on her subordinates. Van Gunsteren concluded that Carollo had been systematically harassing her doctoral students for 15 years.

At this point in the chronology of events, two additional serious flaws appear in the ETH system. First, at the end of an ombudsman’s tenure, they don’t pass cases on to their successor – there is no managerial administrative system. In other words, ETH has no memory. Second, since the role of ombudsman is always assumed by professors emeritus of ETH, they are all biased. They are familiar with all the rumors and stories that have been circulating and have either a positive or a negative relationship with the professors.

«Do We Have a ‹Battle Plan›?»

While a storm was brewing around Marcella Carollo, her husband, Simon Lilly, 58 at the time, was celebrating a success. The physics professors at ETH had encouraged him to seek a second term as department head. This lanky man with glasses and a touch of red in his hair is a quiet, hard-working man who doesn’t make a lot of waves. His unpretentious manner made him popular among his colleagues, and one-and-a-half years earlier they had elected him to be their boss for two years. Now, he had been asked to consider adding another two years. At this point in time, he had no way of knowing that the conflict between his wife and her doctoral student was also about to turn his career on its head. In order to avoid conflicts of interest, Lilly is not responsible for his wife. Instead, this role falls to his deputy, Rainer Wallny.

In early February 2017, Carollo got summoned by Vice Rector Togni to his office to explain why she was no longer willing to work with her doctoral candidate. The professor handed the administrator a dossier with a comprehensive explanation for why, in her view, there had been too little scientific progress to merit continuing in the pursuit of a doctorate. The meeting lasted three hours. There is no record of what was said, only a file entry by Togni.

During their discussion, Carollo said she suspected Marignano had changed the password, preventing all access to her research data in an effort to block her dismissal. In fact, the data belongs to ETH. Togni promised to look into the matter.

But instead of mediating between the professor and the doctoral student, as prescribed by the regulations for doctoral studies, Vice Rector Togni met two days later with two doctoral students who, until then, had not complained about Carollo. Once again, there is no record of what was said. A few weeks later, though, ETH’s administration informed Carollo that the two doctoral students had been removed from her tutelage because they reportedly wanted to change advisers.