The small faction of faculty members who blasted Goldsmith in the Globe article “are going way over the top,” said Charles Fried, the Beneficial professor of law. “It does not hurt Goldsmith, but it hurts them.”

Faculty welcomed Fried back to Harvard after his stint as solicitor general in the Reagan administration—even though many professors disagreed with the views Fried expressed as a government official.

Fried said the criticism of Goldsmith marked a break from that precedent of collegiality. “The idea that we should pass political judgment on what people did as lawyers to the government is very dangerous and quite wrong,” Fried said. “We’re not the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

In fact, the Senate Judiciary Committee has passed judgment on Goldsmith—confirming his appointment as assistant attorney general in 2003.

Luminaries in the field of international law lavished praise on Goldsmith in letters to the Senate panel as it vetted his nomination. “Even when I disagree, I admire the personal and professional integrity that characterizes all his work,” wrote Anne-Marie Slaughter, dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School.

As Goldsmith waited for his appointment to be confirmed, the University of Virginia offered him a tenured post—which he took for three months before rejoining the Bush administration.

Other law schools vied for Goldsmith’s highly-prized services. “It was a great coup that Harvard Law School was able to attract him to our faculty,” said Story Professor of Law Daniel J. Meltzer ’72. “Jack Goldsmith is an extraordinarily distinguished and influential scholar.”

And the bulk of faculty members who spoke to The Crimson yesterday appear to be equally enthusiastic about the Law School’s success in luring Goldsmith to Cambridge.

“He is a great scholar of international law and a great teacher,” Dean Elena Kagan said in an interview yesterday. “I’m as proud of the Goldsmith appointment as of anything I’ve done as dean.”

—Staff writer Daniel J. Hemel can be reached at hemel@fas.harvard.edu.