Gudmund Harlem - Later Career

Later Career

On 1 August 1955 he became Norwegian Minister of Social Affairs as a part of Gerhardsen's Third Cabinet. In February 1961 he was reshuffled to become Norwegian Minister of Defence. He held this position until August 1963, when John Lyng's short-lived Cabinet took over. The Lyng cabinet was toppled after only a month, and Harlem became Defence Minister once again from September 1963 to October 1965, when Per Borten's Cabinet took over.

After the end of his political career, Harlem returned to the Statens Attføringsinstitutt. He also doubled as assistant physician at Rikshospitalet from 1965 to 1966. In 1970 he was promoted to director of Statens Attføringsinstitutt, a position he held until 1977. He was a candidate to succeed Karl Evang as leader of the Norwegian Directorate for Health in 1972, but Torbjørn Mork was chosen. He took the Doctor of Medicine degree in 1976 with the thesis Studies on the Relation between Impairment, Disability and Dependency, and was a professor at the Norwegian Institute of Technology from 1977 to 1980. He rounded off his career as director of NTNF from 1980 to 1986, and then with two years as a general physician in Oslo. He died in March 1988.

Harlem was a member of the board of NAVF from 1949 to 1957, and chaired two special committees in the NTNF (on pollution from 1970 to 1976; on working environment from 1977 to 1980) before becoming director. He chaired the board of directors of the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences from 1976 to 1988 and the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority from 1977 to 1988, and was the deputy chair of Rikshospitalet from 1970 to 1981 and the Financial Supervisory Authority of Norway from 1985 to 1988. He was engaged in the disability rights movement, and chaired the Sentralrådet for yrkesvalghemmede from 1955 to 1957 and 1966 to 1970. He was also president of the International Society for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled from 1966 to 1972.