The University of Sydney sealed a deal on Monday to purchase land from a Catholic residential college to build a A$350 million (US$270 million) medical research center.

The agreement prevents the university conducting embryonic stem cell research in the new center or “any other procedures involving the termination of human life or the artificial creation of human life”.

The university’s vice-chancellor, Gavin Brown, told local media the college had originally wanted a wider ban on all research contrary to the ethical beliefs of the Catholic Church.

Brown said the deal would not prevent embryonic stem cell research elsewhere on campus. “The conditions were purely a question of where certain things would be done, not whether they could be done,” Brown told local radio on Tuesday.

“We’re not actually stopping any university activity but we’re respecting some other people’s principles,” he said.

But the university’s student union and the Greens political party criticized the deal as restricting academic research.

“This damages all universities because it undermines the very important principle of freedom of inquiry, freedom of research,” said John Kaye, the Greens’ education spokesman in New South Wales state.

“It places on record the idea that one group can dictate with their prejudices what can and cannot be researched at an Australian university,” Kaye said.

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