Academic staff at the University of Sydney have warned it would be “naive” to think any agreement with the Ramsay Centre over its mooted western civilisation degree would not affect academic autonomy as new details of its proposed deal with the conservative group emerged.

On Monday, staff and students addressed an arts faculty board meeting as the university continues working on a draft memorandum with the Ramsay Centre over its controversial western civilisation degree.

Last week the university’s vice-chancellor, Michael Spence, told members of the National Tertiary Education Union that a draft MOU would be presented to the faculty board before being circulated more widely for consultation.

On Friday, the Guardian reported that Spence told the NTEU the draft terms with the Ramsay Centre would be much more “donor hands-off” than a standard agreement.

With security personnel present, faculty board members, NTEU representatives and students heard from the university’s provost, Stephen Garton, on Monday about the university’s preliminary negotiations.

At the meeting Garton gave a presentation about the university’s preliminary negotiations with the Ramsay Centre.

“He basically said that this is a wonderful opportunity to get funding for the university but that we’re not going to compromise on issues relating to academic integrity,” one person present at the meeting said.

However during the meeting Garton did reveal that under the draft terms the university would insist that the Ramsay Centre agree to run the course for at least eight years, and would be allowed to conduct an audit on the course to determine whether or not to extend it by another four years.

Garton also told the meeting that academics from the Ramsay Centre would have some say in staff appointments. A single member of the group would be allowed to sit on the appointment panel, but that members of its board – which includes former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard – would not be included in that process.

The university would insist on full control over delivering the degree, including curriculum.

Those two issues were key sticking points for the Australian National University, which pulled out of negotiations with the Ramsay Centre earlier this year. The ANU vice-chancellor, Brian Schmidt, accused the centre of seeking to “micromanage” the establishment of the course.

Several people who attended the meeting told Guardian Australia the presentation contained little new information and raised concerns about the sincerity of the university’s consultation.

The Ramsay Centre negotiations were not formally on the faculty board’s agenda and two people present at the meeting told the Guardian that no draft MOU was circulated in the meeting.

Linda Connor, the chair of the university’s anthropology department, spoke as a representative of the NTEU at the meeting.

She raised concerns that the deal with the Ramsay Centre was “a fait accompli”.

“The matter does not appear on today’s agenda, there are no papers and there is no motion proposed,” she said.

“Consultation is a vague process when not supported by adequate information and consequential deliberations. Academic governance has been considerably weakened in recent years; accepting the RC proposal will damage it irretrievably.”

Connor told the Guardian that she was concerned the university’s leadership was being “somewhat naive” in thinking that the process could be controlled.

“As one of the students who spoke said, ‘you don’t get the money for free and not give them what they want’,” she said.

Chris Hartney, a senior lecturer in the university’s religion department and a member of the faculty board, told the Guardian that he spoke against the proposal in the meeting.

“I said I was concerned that focusing more on western civilisation [would be] to the detriment of our existing programs.” he said. “It seems to me that in a modern, multicultural city, its primary university should be celebrating that diversity in its curriculum make-up.”

A spokeswoman from the University of Sydney declined to comment before the meeting on the basis that the university was “not expecting any formal decisions to come out of today’s meeting”.