Feb. 26 (Bloomberg) -- Jody Freeman, a Harvard law professor, helped press the Bush administration in a lawsuit to regulate greenhouse gases. Now, she is counseling President Barack Obama on how best to combat global warming.

Freeman is one of at least 11 Harvard professors joining the Obama administration, the most since the Kennedy White House regularly recruited from the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school. The new hires are being drafted from the economics department, the Kennedy School of Government, and the law school.

Obama, a 1991 Harvard Law School graduate, is surrounding himself with intellectuals who, like the president, have pursued careers in public service. They bring policy and political expertise, without the ideology that marked the George W. Bush administration, said Jeffrey Frankel, a professor of capital formation and growth at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“All of them are completely open to new information,” said Frankel, who was a member of the Council of Economic Advisers for three years during Bill Clinton’s presidency. “They are trying to find out what really works. People don’t value competence, but you do need it.”

For Freeman, Obama’s offer was impossible to turn down.

“This is really the opportunity of a lifetime,” Freeman, 45, said in a phone interview from the White House. “To work in this administration, on this set of issues, for this president. To me, it was irresistible.”

Supreme Court Case

Freeman, a native of Canada who became a U.S. citizen last year, founded Harvard’s Environmental Law Program. She wrote a brief for former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who, as a friend of the court, joined a Supreme Court case over whether the Environmental Protection Agency had a duty to regulate carbon dioxide emissions. The EPA said curbing greenhouse gases would weaken U.S. relations with other counties. Freeman argued that the agency couldn’t consider foreign policy in its decision making. In April 2007, the court ruled 5-4 against the EPA.

“She was basically brought to Harvard to build an environmental law program, and she built bridges between the law school, the Kennedy School and the public-health school,” said Richard Lazarus, who teaches environmental law at Georgetown University in Washington. “She’s good at building broader structures, and that’s something that will serve her well in the White House.”

Obama tapped Harvard’s past president, Lawrence Summers, also the former U.S. Treasury secretary, to lead the National Economic Council. The former dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan, is awaiting a Senate confirmation vote to become solicitor general.

Kennedy Precedent

John Holdren, a professor of environmental policy, began his job as an assistant to the president and faces Senate approval to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Not since 1961, when John F. Kennedy became president of the U.S., have so many intellectuals left Harvard for Washington, said Richard Parker, a lecturer at the Kennedy School. The recruits allow Obama to leverage the prestige of Harvard, the oldest institution of higher learning in the U.S., Parker said.

“A great deal of what Obama does from the White House is about supplying a sense of confidence,” Parker said. “He’s making safe, cautious choices. If he was to choose an assistant professor from Podunk U., we’d be in trouble, because the market and the press would turn on the president.”

Other Harvard scholars joining Obama are the Kennedy School professors Jeffrey Liebman, serving as executive associate director for the Office of Management and Budget, and Samantha Power, chosen to be an adviser on national security.

Chief Weapons Buyer

Jeremy Stein, an economics professor, is working for Summers. On Feb. 23, Ashton Carter, a Kennedy School professor of science and international affairs, was nominated to be the Defense Department’s chief weapons buyer.

Law faculty members leaving Harvard also include David Barron, named principal deputy assistant attorney general; Daniel Meltzer, serving as principal deputy counsel to the president; and Cass Sunstein, Obama’s choice to be administrator of information and regulatory affairs.

Sunstein, 54, who is awaiting nomination, taught from 1981 until last year at the University of Chicago’s law school. There he met Obama, who was on the faculty for 12 years. Sunstein is the county’s leading thinker on regulatory policy and administrative law, said Douglas G. Baird, a professor and former dean at the Chicago school.

Married to Power

“He is someone who believes you have to worry about the costs and benefit of regulation,” Baird said. “You can’t say ‘Let’s save this worm’ and never mind the cost.”

Sunstein, who is married to Power, is leaving his Harvard post for “less pay and more grief,” Baird said. “This is a low-profile job. It doesn’t bring headlines. He wants to get things right.”

Sunstein is an advocate of “soft paternalism,” which means that instead of telling people who are regulated what to do, you shape the choices so they are pushed in a direction, Baird said.

The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, has reported that an additional two faculty members are leaving for jobs under Obama. They are David Cutler, a professor of applied economics, and Joseph Nye, a professor of international relations.

Holdren, Kagan, Nye and Sunstein declined to comment. Barron, Carter, Cutler, Liebman, Meltzer, Power, Stein and Summers didn’t respond to requests for interviews.

‘Some Great People’

Harvard Law School professors and students take pride in the number of their colleagues working for Obama, said Howell Jackson, the interim dean.

“It’s terrific for Harvard Law and also terrific for the Obama administration,” Jackson said. “He’s getting some great people. They’re just the sort of people I’d hope my president would be relying on for advice.”

Obama’s appointments reflect his academic experiences and his comfort with scholars, said Sean Wilentz, a history professor at Princeton University in New Jersey. Besides his Harvard law degree, Obama received a bachelor’s degree from Columbia University in New York before teaching at Chicago.

“Literally, this is the world from which he has come,” Wilentz said. “He’s been around the Ivy League and places like it for a while. It’s natural for him.”

Harvard, in particular, had appeal for Kennedy and Obama, said Ted Sorensen, who was an adviser in the Kennedy White House and who wrote a biography of JFK.

‘Holding Tank’

“The faculty members have that kind of public-service frame of mind, and it speaks well for Obama that he’s looking for very talented people to face the problems the country now faces,” Sorensen said.

The exit of professors from Harvard to join Obama presents a dilemma for the school, said Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University and a specialist on presidential transitions.

“Harvard doesn’t want to be known as the holding tank for Democratic administrations,” Light said. “At the same time, it wants its faculty to make a difference through public service.”

The exodus has forced Harvard to adjust classes and schedules. Stein’s departure prompted the economics department to improvise, said James Stock, the department chairman. Summers’s globalization class won’t be offered this semester, and a last- minute replacement had to be found to teach Stein’s finance course.

“If Jeremy Stein or David Cutler is going to go down to Washington, it’s our job to step up to the plate and make it happen,” Stock said. “The department and I see the public mission as critical to what we do.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Oliver Staley in New York at ostaley@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 26, 2009 00:00 EST