A UC Berkeley law professor who provided the Bush administration with a memo justifying torture for terrorists may face academic punishment for his off-campus work.

UC Berkeley leaders are wrestling with that decision as a federal investigation into John Yoo’s legal advice to the Bush administration apparently winds down.

The dilemma is rare. At risk are the tenets of academic freedom that have long allowed college faculty members to speak their minds in the name of scholarship.

Yoo’s case revolves around his advice on dealing with accused terrorists, including a notorious memo that provides legal justification for torture. Yoo, who is temporarily teaching at Orange County’s Chapman University, has long attracted protests on his home campus, but some surprising allies have come to his defense.

“I think this is simply a left-wing version of McCarthyism,” said Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard Law School professor who disagrees strongly with Yoo’s views on torture. “He should be judged solely on the merits of his academics.”

But Berkeley administrators and faculty leaders said they would be concerned about Yoo teaching law students if he were found to have violated ethical or legal standards. Critics have called Yoo a yes-man for President George W. Bush, essentially telling him what he wanted to hear.

Yoo, who has been at Berkeley since 1993 and was tenured in 1999, did not return messages this week.

The code of conduct for UC Berkeley faculty states that criminal convictions could result in discipline, but it is less explicit about other transgressions. But some, including Berkeley law Dean Christopher Edley and a top faculty leader, have said they could punish Yoo regardless of whether he is tried and convicted in a court.

“A criminal conviction is not necessary,” said Christopher Kutz, a law professor and vice chairman of the UC Berkeley Academic Senate. But discipline based on anything less is “new territory, and it’s dangerous territory,” Kutz said.

A Justice Department spokesman said the federal investigation into Yoo’s role is ongoing. He declined to estimate when the inquiry would wrap up.

Edley, who was on President Barack Obama’s transition team and who has held positions in two Democratic administrations, said he and others on campus are conflicted about how to handle Yoo. Asked whether the issue has put him in a tough spot, Edley was unequivocal: “That’s an understatement.”

“I think that almost everybody is concerned” about how the debate will end, he said. “All of us need to work through the tension of the principles that preserve the excellence and independence of the university versus the principles that govern society.”

Even considering punishment has put Edley at odds with some colleagues and friends, including Dershowitz, his former Harvard co-worker. Edley should not have to think about the issue at all, Dershowitz said.

“It only puts a dean in a tough spot if he lacks courage,” Dershowitz said. But “in the end, he’ll do the right thing.”

Yoo’s presence has polarized academics, including many who say they’re staunch supporters of academic freedom. At Chapman, hundreds have signed petitions and joined online groups criticizing Yoo’s opinions.

Much of the debate over his fitness as a law professor has centered on whether he used bad faith in condoning torture. If he simply told the president what he wanted to hear, Yoo’s work did not pass scholarly muster, critics said.

“The CIA asked the Bush administration for justification, and that’s what John Yoo did,” said Berkeley attorney Sharon Adams, a member of the National Lawyer Guild’s Committee Against Torture. “He did not provide advice, he provided justification for torture.”

Others have said UC Berkeley should leave Yoo be as long as he is not convicted of a crime.

“People who have outlying views are the ones for whom academic freedom is designed,” said Michael A. Olivas, a University of Houston law professor and expert in higher-education law.