An American Civil Liberties Union committee has formally dropped proposals viewed by some civil libertarians as an attempt to limit dissent by members of the organization’s board.

The move seemed aimed at extinguishing controversy over the proposals, which drew warnings that the storied civil liberties group was wavering in its support for robust freedom of speech.

“We will ensure that any description of board members’ obligations to the ACLU accurately reflects the ACLU’s abiding commitment to the free speech rights of all, including ACLU board members,” the president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen, said yesterday in an unusual news release discussing the group’s internal affairs.

Ms. Strossen also released and posted on the ACLU’s Web site a memorandum to her from the law professor who headed the committee which drafted the proposals. The professor, Lawrence Hamermesh of Widener University, said that the panel charged with clarifying the duties of board members “will be withdrawing” portions of its plan that came under fire at a June 17 meeting of the ACLU board.

The proposals said a board member “may not criticize the ACLU board or staff” and should “refrain from publicly highlighting” any disagreement with the organization’s policies. Although some of the language sounded mandatory, committee members insisted the proposals were intended only as guidelines.

In an interview yesterday, Ms. Strossen acknowledged that the public repudiation of the proposals was unusual. “The public statement is obviously because of the public attention,” she told The New York Sun. “The press coverage has made a public announcement relevant.”

The proposals, first reported in May by the New York Times, prompted an outpouring of concern from ACLU members and supporters, some of whom faulted ACLU leaders for failing to move more quickly to dismiss any suggestion of limits on board members’ speech.

Ms. Strossen said it would have been wrong for her to try to kill the proposals before they were formally presented. “Are we supposed to say there are some ideas that are so wrong that we’re somehow not going to allow them to be proposed for debate?” she asked. She said there was little support for the proposals on the 83-member board, but acknowledged the committee reviewing the issue voted, 9-1, to back the plan.

While the proposals were circulated to Ms. Strossen and other top ACLU officials in January, she said she did not review them until just before the June meeting.

“This is more face-saving nonsense,” a former board member, Michael Meyers, said. “I don’t know why it took so long for board members to realize they were infringing on free speech.”

Mr. Hamermesh’s memo, dated July 6, said he was writing at the request of Ms. Strossen. One passage in it also appears verbatim in Ms. Strossen’s statement.

Reached at his office yesterday, Mr. Hamermesh declined to discuss the sequence of events that led to his memo and referred questions about the matter back to the ACLU.