Hadia Tajik defends her own handling of Giske’s warning

In her new book, Hadia Tajik only mentions Trond Giske and the warnings against him about alleged sexual harassment. She defends her own handling of the notice against her then deputy colleague.

Hadia Tajik’s book “Freedom: A Political and Personal History” is scheduled to be released on Friday. The book is a mix of a story about her growing up and a series of views on what it is like to be a young politician with an immigrant background.

She touches in a small way the internal struggle for power in the Labor Party and the dispute between her and fellow former chairman Trond Giske. Issues that have marked the news scene in recent years.

Tajik writes that on December 20, 2017, she was informed by a close employee that she had submitted a formal notification to the leadership of the Labor Party secretariat at the Storting. The warning was about alleged sexual harassment and related to Trond Giske.

“She had chosen to send the ad before she told me about it,” Tajik writes.

Tajik responds in the book to the fact that various media outlets wrote that it was his which forwards the first warnings about Giske to the “proper body.”

“What is correct is that I have ensured that concerns and information about unacceptable behavior reach those who need to follow up. The pleasure is mine.”

Duty to notify

Tajik writes that anyone who receives information about something worthy of criticism has a legal and moral duty to address it, or to pass it on to those who should.

He says in the book that at the same time he was informed about the warning on December 20, he also saw an assessment of the warning by a lawyer and an organizational psychologist.

“I had no reason to doubt what he said. I still don’t have that,” Tajik writes.

Trond Giske does not want to comment on the information in the book related to the warnings against him.

Offended suspect

Tajik believes that the #metoo campaign has been important and has provided a conceptual framework for what sexual harassment is, but that victims of harassment are still held accountable.

“As sources in the FAFO survey frequently said: That is all you have to endure. Why didn’t you set your limits more clearly? Why didn’t she fuck him? Instead of asking: Why did it calm down? you ask questions that are appropriate to hold the person responsible for the bullying accountable, ”he writes.

Therefore, Tajiks believe that it often happens that a warning becomes a greater risk for those who say it than for the one who is informed.

“It is the responsibility of a manager to see this and do something about it,” he writes.

Giske resigned as deputy leader of the Labor Party. The party concluded that in several of the reported cases, the party’s guidelines against sexual harassment had been violated.

“I am a believer”

In the book, the deputy leader of the Labor Party describes his relationship with faith in children and being a Muslim.

“I am a believer, but without intermediaries or women,” Tajik writes in the book.

“I have fasted but no longer fast during Ramadan,” he explains, adding that he does not pray ritually.

“As an adult, I stopped being a member of Muslim organizations. I don’t feel at home there,” she explains, saying that she peaked when she was a student in Oslo in 2005 and visited a Muslim student center.

Girls and boys sat there with a separating curtain and she thought this was wrong. Boys and girls hang out all the time in other places in Norway.

In the book, Tajik writes that he has felt “the absence of a common modern Muslim identity.”

Regular Facebook and Google

In the book, Tajik also advocates a discussion about whether Facebook and Google should be regulated.

He is concerned about the anger and hatred that can be found on social media and that independent and publisher-controlled media are struggling with the economy.

“This means that arenas that are regulated by recognized ethical guidelines on how to ensure free, critical and balanced debate have been replaced by tech companies that rule primarily according to stock market principles, not freedom of speech. “Tajik writes.

She writes that compared to other technological innovations, it is understandable that it takes time to see the needs of regulating social media and online communication.

“Facebook is no older than a defiant 16-year-old today. Amazon and Google are in their early 20s. The time is right to talk about how their further development should take place. And whether it should be left to business considerations alone, or to a greater extent also democratic ».