A staff-led campaign opposing the University of Sydney’s consideration of a western civilisation degree funded by the conservative Ramsay Centre is continuing to escalate, with a department formally expressing its opposition to the proposal.

On Monday the university’s department of media and communications circulated a motion stating it “strongly opposes” the university entering into agreement with the Ramsay Centre.

The motion, passed last week, argues the adoption of the Ramsay-backed degree would be a “retrograde step” at odds with “diversity and inclusiveness”.

“The rhetoric of western civilisation is highly problematic and certainly in contradiction with the ideals of Australia’s multicultural society and its role in the Asia Pacific region,” the motion read.

“A conversation on western culture – already impossible to define – could not even start without the richness, interconnectivity, scale and complex relations of the multiple communities that have contributed to its flourishing.”

It comes amid an increasingly terse debate between staff who oppose the negotiations with the Ramsay Centre and the university’s leaders. On Saturday Guardian Australia reported that an analysis of staff responses to the proposal revealed university faculty were split on whether or not to support the degree.

Guardian Australia understands at least two other departments within the faculty of arts – where the western civilisation degree would be run if it goes ahead – are considering passing similar motions opposing the deal.

Some academics said they were becoming increasingly frustrated at what they said was the university’s unwillingness to discuss their concerns with the Ramsay Centre proposal.

On Friday Nick Riemer, a senior lecturer in English and linguistics and one of the most vocal opponents of the Ramsay Centre proposal, wrote on the university’s internal social media network that discussions of race in relation to the Ramsay Centre were being “silenced” by the university.

Riemer wrote that the opposition to the western civilisation degree “is motivated by colleagues’ worry that Ramsay is, at base, a political project of the racist right” and that it represented “the institutionalisation of ideas in the curriculum that strengthen racism and European supremacism intellectually and politically”.

It came after his written contribution to a university-wide consultation process was edited to remove the phrase “embodying a kind of academic racism” in relation to Ramsay.

A University of Sydney spokeswoman told Guardian Australia posts were only edited if they were “potentially defamatory”. But writing on Yammer – a sort of internal social media network – Riemer wrote that it was “completely unacceptable that discussion of racism is being silenced”.

In a department newsletter sent last month, the dean of the arts faculty, Annamarie Jagose, wrote that concerns the western civilisation program was “predicated on the superiority of a monoculture” was a “mischaracterisation”.

“The unimpeachable way that the MOU preserves academic autonomy makes it impossible to imagine how current colleagues would be persuaded or new colleagues recruited to teach western civilisation as a culture superior to others,” she wrote.

“I agree that there would be ‘serious risk of reputational damage to the university’ if we were to embark on an educational program that sought ‘to legitimate a broader politics of divisiveness and xenophobia in society’ but I note that the only commentators making these sorts of claims, which slide inferentially and alliteratively—as do the student protest banners—from ‘Ramsay’ to ‘racism’, are not the tabloid media but ourselves.”

Jagose wrote that the draft MOU “preserves academic autonomy in every respect”.

The university’s vice chancellor, Michael Spence, said he would respond to the university-wide consultation early this week.