C. Marcella Carollo

C. Marcella Carollo worked as a professional astronomer for 25 years between 1994–2019. Her scientific career was ended by the ETH Zürich who, following accusations that she had bullied students, made her the first Professor to be dismissed at ETH Zurich in the 165 years of its history. Carollo has maintained her innocence against these accusations, publicly commenting on her case in terms that indicate "academic mobbing". The dismissal has been appealed to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court.
The case has attracted considerable controversy. It has become a prime exhibit in the debate about due process and the preservation of basic legal rights within academia, especially in German-speaking universities.
Education.
Carollo began her studies at the University of Palermo. There she earned a laurea degree in physics in 1987, with a specialization in biophysics. She worked for more than four years outside of academia before starting her PhD in astrophysics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, which she earned PhD in 1994.
Career.
Carollo was awarded a European Community Prize Fellowship, which she held at Leiden University from 1994 to 1996. She held a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship at Johns Hopkins University from 1997 to 1999. Carollo was appointed Assistant Professor in the Astronomy Department at Columbia University in 1999, a position she held until 2002. That year, she moved to ETH Zurich as an Associate Professor, in a dual appointment with her spouse Simon Lilly. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2007. She contributed as a member of the Science Oversight Committee to the development of the WFC3 camera which was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009. In 2012, she entered the Top Italian Scientist list from VIA Academy and in 2013 she was awarded the Winton Capital Research Prize. In 2018, she was identified as a Highly Cited Researcher for her research work at ETH between 2006–2016 – one of only about 20 ETH scientists so recognized.
Research.
Carollo's contribution to astronomy is in the fields of extragalactic astronomy and specifically galaxy formation and evolution. Her early work established the relation between the metallicity gradient and stellar mass in galactic spheroids, demonstrated the presence of dark matter halos beyond their half-light radii and was seminal in discovering and characterizing disk-like (pseudo) bulges and nuclear massive star clusters in disk galaxies like the Milky Way. Later she and her ETH group worked on the role of galactic environment and progenitor bias in galaxy evolution, the growth and "quenching" of massive galaxies at high redshifts, and participated in the discovery and characterization of the most distant galaxies in the universe, in the heart of the reionization epoch.
Controversy.
In 2019, Carollo became the first professor in 165 years to be dismissed by the ETH Zurich. The case is controversial, and an appeal is currently before the Swiss Federal Administrative Court. Facts in the case that have been reported in the media are as follows:
In December 2016, Professor Carollo informed one of her PhD students that she could no longer supervise her PhD, because of the lack of progress. In January 2017, the ETH Ombudsman Wilfred van Gunsteren helped this student to collect complaints (testimonials) about Carollo from a number of previous students and postdocs, as well as from uninvolved individuals.
In May 2017, ETH Zurich decided, without investigating the truthfulness of the accusations, to dissolve its Institute for Astronomy. Marcella Carollo and her spouse Simon Lilly were given a sabbatical leave. In October 2017, an article about the closure and the allegations against Carollo appeared in a Swiss newspaper and was also reported internationally.
Shortly afterwards, the ETH Zurich commissioned an Administrative Investigation from an external lawyer, Dr. Markus Rüssli, of the Zurich law firm Umbricht. His report was delivered to ETH in October 2018.
Meanwhile, on 17 January 2018, the ETH Zurich announced a second investigation against Carollo. This concerned accusations of scientific misconduct in the same secret testimonials. The ETH at this time suspended Carollo from her duties at the university.
In the meantime, in October 2018 the ETH announced, on the basis of the Rüssli Report, that they had started the formal procedure to determine whether Carollo should be dismissed from her position as a Professor. The Dismissal Commission that was established for this purpose made a clear recommendation that "Professor Carollo should not be dismissed". The report of the Commission noted a "lack of objectivity" in the Rüssli report and "regards it as overwhelmingly probable that any Court would consider the dismissal of Professor Carollo to be unjustified (or at best against the law)".
Despite this unambiguous recommendation of the Commission, the President of ETH Zurich in March 2019 submitted a request to the ETH Board to terminate the employment relationship with Professor Carollo. On July 15, 2019, the ETH Board agreed to this request and dismissed Carollo with six months notice.
The dismissal has been appealed to the Swiss Federal Administrative Court. The case is pending.
The Carollo case has become highly controversial. It has been extensively researched by the Swiss investigative online magazine Republik. Following six months of investigation, the Republik was highly critical of the ETH Zurich's handling of the case in a series of three articles.
The general setup of the Ombudsman office at the ETH has been criticized in an independent audit by the Swiss Federal Audit Office in June 2019, recommending a more independent office, with fewer current or former members of the ETH or other members with longstanding ties.
Kenneth Westhues in universities also analyzed several documents in the case in an interview in Republik. Commenting on the Rüssli report: he was of the opinion that there were "not sufficient grounds for dismissal [...] there is not a single serious infringement [...] misdemeanors that are so vague and general that they are very difficult to disprove [...] the concrete allegations concern either completely ordinary events in research or trivial offenses". In Westhues' experience, academic mobbing often proceeds when, as here, "an alliance is formed between the complainants and the university administration. The presumption of innocence, which is enshrined in western law, is considered irrelevant". Westhues commented that the case "follows a pattern [...] the university appoints and pays an expert from outside [...] to initiate an investigation and write a report. This expert is not neutral". "The typical report tends to be one-sided in favor of the mobbing persons who are making the allegations. Unity makes them stronger. This gives mobbing its power". This external report often "simply presents the results of interviews, which consist mainly of a disparagement of the target person". He continues: "The university administration then uses the report as the basis for acting against the target person".
The actions of the ETH Zurich in the Carollo case have also been questioned in other media articles and editorials in Switzerland.