The American Civil Liberties Union has severed its financial ties with the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, saying it is unable to accept new restrictions aimed at preventing the use of philanthropic funds to promote terrorism and violence.

After a vigorous internal debate, the ACLU decided at a board meeting this weekend to turn aside more than $1 million in grants, rather than sign pledges prompted by reports that Ford money flowed to virulently anti-Israel organizations.

“It is a sad day when two of this country’s most beloved and respected foundations feel they are operating in such a climate of fear and intimidation that they are compelled to require thousands of recipients to accept vague grant language which could have a chilling effect on civil liberties,” the executive director of the ACLU, Anthony Romero, said in a written statement. “The ambiguities are simply too significant to ignore or accept.”

The Ford Foundation’s new language bars recipients of its funds from engaging in any activity that “promotes violence, terrorism, bigotry, or the destruction of any state.”

The Rockefeller Foundation’s provisions state that recipients of its funds may not “directly or indirectly engage in, promote, or support other organizations or individuals who engage in or promote terrorist activity.”

In a statement, the president of the Ford Foundation, Susan Berresford, sought to minimize the falling-out with the civil-liberties group.

“We accept and respect that we have a different mission from the ACLU, even while we share the same basic values,” she wrote. “We are proud to support the ACLU’s defense of free speech. We do not, however, believe that a private donor like Ford should support all speech itself (such as speech that promotes bigotry or violence).”

At least 10 major universities had raised similar concerns about the new policies of the two huge, New York based foundations. Most of the schools said yesterday that they recently reached agreements with the foundations that allow financing to continue.

“We went a number of rounds with the Ford Foundation,” the provost of the University of Chicago, Richard Saller, said in an interview. “We and Harvard and a group of other universities – but not all – decided to accept the grants on the basis of a side letter that Ford sent us reassuring us that they endorse and support academic freedom on campus.”

Mr. Saller said the side letters make clear that the universities won’t lose money because of ideas advocated by faculty members or students. He said, however, he remains displeased with the notion of allowing an outside group to dictate what the university may or may not say.

“The one thing they did maintain conditions over is official speech by the institution. I’d have to say we’re not happy with that,” Mr. Saller said. “It became clear in late spring or early summer that Harvard was going to go ahead and accept. We pressed with Ford on the issue of what they called official speech and didn’t get any more movement from them.”

In a July letter obtained by The New York Sun, a director of the Ford Foundation, Elaine Kranich, offered a “clarification” of the foundation’s position.

“We do not want or intend to interfere with discussions in classrooms, faculty publications, student remarks in chat rooms, or other communications that express the views of the individual(s) and not the institution,” Ms. Kranich wrote. “Our grant letter relates only to the official speech and conduct of the university and to speech or conduct that the university explicitly endorses.”

A Harvard official said the university had made contingency plans to replace Ford grants if no agreement could be reached.

An attorney who advised Ford on the new restrictions, Stuart Eizenstat, the former official of the Carter and Clinton administrations, said 74 universities have agreed to the new terms.

Stanford is one holdout, at least for now. “Stanford is still discussing the situation and still studying it,” said a spokeswoman for the California university, Kate Chesley.

Columbia was among the schools that lodged objections to the grant language earlier this year. A spokeswoman said last evening that no one familiar with the matter was available for an interview.

Mr. Eizenstat, the Ford adviser, said he was puzzled by the civil liberties group’s decision.

“This is something which is a little perplexing because Ford has made clear that it did not see how the grant language could interfere in any way with the ACLU’s ongoing work,” he said. The attorney added that Ford was willing to sign a side letter saying it would not hold the group responsible for the speech or actions of its clients, but the ACLU declined.

“It’s unfortunate that any organization feels somehow that that compromises their programs. We did not see and do not see how it does,” Mr. Eizenstat said.

A member of the ACLU board, Judith Bendich, said the main objection to the grant terms was that they were too similar to phrasing in the anti-terror law that is the organization’s bete noir, the Patriot Act.

“You had to swear that you didn’t support or promote bigotry or terrorism,” she said. “It tracks the kind of language that’s in the Patriot Act, and it appears to have arisen out of this kind of climate of fear and intimidation or something that the administration is pushing.”

Ms. Bendich, a Seattle attorney and 20-year veteran of the ACLU board, complained that the foundations’ restrictions are vague and overbroad.

“Some people believe abortion is terrorism. If we defend the Klan, are we supporting bigotry? That’s kind of the dilemma,” she said.

Ms. Bendich stressed that the ACLU has no plans to engage in terrorism or bigotry. “We do not support people bombing anything. We do not support the loss of life,” she said.

According to Ms. Bendich, some members of the ACLU’s board and leadership were willing to agree to the foundations’ terms, but more were not.

A database on the Rockefeller Foundation’s Web site shows the group gave the ACLU $150,000 in 2003 for “general support.” Rockefeller officials did not return calls seeking comment yesterday for this article.

According to the Ford Foundation’s Web site, the ACLU received two grants this year, totaling about $1.1 million. It got about $1.5 million in support from Ford in 2003 and $2.7 million in 2002. Some of the grants were intended to address “new challenges to civil liberties.”

“It’s ironic because the Ford grant was for the purposes of challenging and education on the Patriot Act and yet they had this language in there which we simply could not sign,” Ms. Bendich said.

An ACLU spokeswoman, Emily Whitfield, said the national group spends about $44 million each year.

The falling-out among these goliaths of the American left must have been personally awkward for the ACLU’s Mr. Romero. Before becoming executive director of the civil-liberties group in 2001, he was director of human rights and international cooperation for the Ford Foundation.

A series published a year ago by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Palestinian Arab groups supported by the Ford Foundation engaged in anti-Israel activities, particularly at a U.N. summit in Durban in 2001. The articles also indicated that American anti-terrorism officials were worried that accounting weaknesses, fraud, and embezzlement may have resulted in philanthropic grants ending up in the hands of terrorists.