Faust has declined to call Porter’s behavior inappropriate, saying that the president’s responsibilities do not include serving as “scolder-in-chief.”

“I was disappointed by her response,” Lewis said in a recent interview with The Crimson.

Faust maintained in a later interview that Monitor is a separate entity from Harvard.

“That’s an independent organization and business, commenting on its own past behavior, and I would weigh in somehow?” she questioned in an interview with The Crimson. “I don’t think it’s the president’s role ... in the great marketplace of ideas, I’m responsible for keeping it open, keeping it lively, encouraging participation.”

While Faust declined to comment on Monitor’s actions, others have been more critical.

“Monitor has publicly stated that it erred, and far be it from me to disagree,” University Provost Steven E. Hyman said. “They participated in what turned out to be a public relations effort.”

Harvard Law School Professor Detlev F. Vagts ’48 said the professors’ actions with Monitor hurt the University’s reputation.

“It’s lending the Harvard name, in a sense, to Gaddafi,” he said.

Chibli Mallat, a visiting professor at the Law School, said he has had dealings with the Gaddafi regime under very different circumstances.

He is currently representing the family of a Lebanese imam who disappeared in 1978 and may have been killed or imprisoned by Gaddafi, He said he has been offered money by the Libyan regime to drop the case.

“I’ve been very blunt about rejecting it,” Mallat said. “In a way, I feel a little bit of more than satisfaction that I did what I think, that I refused to be—.”

Mallat cut off his sentence. He continued, “I don’t have a judgment of colleagues, but I know that I had a choice like this and I didn’t take it.”

—Tara W. Merrigan and Zoe A. Y. Weinberg contributed to the reporting of this article.

—Staff writer Gautam S. Kumar can be reached at gkumar@college.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julie M. Zauzmer can be reached at jzauzmer@college.harvard.edu.