“What is high on the list,” Faust said at the meeting, “is to allow for people to say what they think.”

University spokesperson Kevin Galvin said yesterday that the University backs Faust’s statement.

In the Faculty meeting, Lewis encouraged the president to consider criticizing professors for outside behavior that paints Harvard in poor light.

Lewis condemned Porter in strong language, saying that Porter had been swayed by financial incentives and that  Porter had claimed the government was a democracy “for a price.”

The 2006 report was compiled by the Monitor Consulting Group, a firm established by several Harvard Business School professors, including Porter, in 1983.

The document repeatedly referred to the Libyan government, which had been led by Gaddafi since 1969, as a “democracy,” and lauded the government for its Westernization efforts.

Porter said that after 2007, when he came to believe that reform had halted, he cut associations with Libya.

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