Milena Penkowa [scroll down for earlier posts] happened on his watch.

Actually, The Ratwoman didn’t just happen on his watch. Hemmingsen did a good deal to enable her vicious ways. And when caught out on his enabling, he lied about it.

The legal investigation into Hemmingsen’s management was sparked by suspicions that arose when he and the rest of the university’s management nominated Penkowa for a prestigious research award in 2008, even though they knew that she had been reported to the police on charges of embezzlement and forgery.

Hemmingsen initially said he didn’t know that Penkowa had been reported to the police, but later he admitted that he knew about it.

Earlier, in 2002, after a faculty committee, smelling a rat, rejected her thesis, “the university’s then dean of faculty Ralf Hemmingsen intervened and sought an external review of Penkowa’s thesis by two other researchers. They were critical of the committee’s decision, arguing that there was no clear evidence of research misconduct. Penkowa resubmitted her thesis to a different committee of researchers not based at the University of Copenhagen and passed…”

How do you get promoted from dean to rector at the University of Copenhagen? You do Milena Penkowa’s bidding.

Understandable, though. Penkowa was having “an intimate relationship with a Science Ministry official,” and you want to be sure to behave slavishly toward anyone shtupping a Science Ministry official…

Although the university’s board of directors says everything’s fine now that Penkowa’s been sentenced, nothing to see here, the new Science Minister, Charlotte Sahl-Madsen, has lost faith in the board and will “increase supervision” of the university.

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How do things like this happen?

They happen when your university is so provincial as to make Lower Slobbovia look like Paris.