BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) - A proposal to revise the University of California's academic freedom statement is stirring debate over the best way to stop professors from turning classrooms into bully pulpits.

The question: Can professors be passionate about a subject without being pushy?

UC's existing policy, first drafted in 1934, says no, declaring the function of the university to be a "dispassionate duty," and advising professors to just "stick to the logic of the facts."

But on Wednesday, the system's Academic Council is scheduled to discuss an amended policy that would give students and faculty greater latitude to express their personal opinions, or "the widest range of viewpoints within the standards of scholarly inquiry and professional ethics."

Appropriately, the move to amend the policy was sparked by an incident last year at UC Berkeley - birthplace of the Free Speech Movement - when a course description advising conservative thinkers to "seek other sections" set off a national uproar.

Neither the existing nor proposed policies allow dissenters to be barred from the classroom. So the flap was soon settled with the course description rewritten and students assured they had the right to speak out.

But the episode persuaded administrators it was time to dust off the old policy.

"It reads as if we're all living in a vacuum," says Gayle Binion, chair of UC's Academic Senate. "People can be passionate about their research and it doesn't make it bad research. Sometimes the most wonderful research is where people are the most passionate and the most committed to a point of view."

In March, UC President Richard Atkinson asked the faculty to recommend changes to the 69-year-old statement. The proposed wording is based on the premise that academic freedom depends on the quality of scholarship, rather than on what motivated the scholar.

But critics say the revised policy loses some important safeguards.

"It's lacking the responsibility, the checks and balances that I think they need," said Luann Wright, who has a Web site, Noindoctrination.org, where students from across the country can post complaints about professors they think are biased.

Wright and other critics say they're fine with professors waxing enthusiastic about their subjects. But they argue that some of the old language, such as a guarantee that the university won't be exploited as a propaganda platform, shouldn't be axed.

"It's pretty easy to cross the line if you feel very strongly about something," says Thomas E. Wood, executive director of the California Association of Scholars, which hasn't taken a formal position on the revised policy.

Wood, co-author of Proposition 209, the 1996 ballot measure that banned affirmative action in state admissions and hiring, agrees that the best professors are engaged with their subjects. But he's concerned that the new policy drops language that while "a little high-flown and pompous" addresses the problem of professors' personal agendas.

Binion counters that the new wording is stronger than the old because it spells out students' rights to academic freedom. But critics say the faculty code of conduct doesn't offer the same kind of protections as the old policy.

Among those critics is Berkeley political science major Steve Sexton, who is a member of the small, but vocal Berkeley College Republicans. Sexton says he has had professors who taught from a liberal perspective and "depending on how comfortable I feel in the class, I'll raise my hand and say something.

"But at the same time you don't want to be singled out by the professor as contesting everything they're saying, so sometimes I don't say anything," he said.