The university announced today that his resignation was accepted. No further comment was provided.

Professor Spurr was suspended by the university in October after news website New Matilda published emails he sent from his university account in which he used inflammatory language including racist terms “Mussies”, “Abos” and “Chinky poos”. He also wrote in a demeaning way about women.

“At Professor Spurr’s request, the university will provide no further comment on this matter,” the university said in a statement.

Professor Spurr advised the federal government’s independent review of the national curriculum. He claimed his membership of the review panel had motivated somebody to hack emails from his personal account and leak them.

Last week Professor Spurr came to a confidential settlement with New Matilda over the publication of his emails. He had pursued the website in the Federal Court, demanding it return any emails still in its possession.

His lawyers had earlier told the court the leaked emails were “the stolen property of a private citizen and … an attack on the federal government”.

New Matilda had refused to disclose the source of the emails or to hand over any further emails in its possession to the court or Professor Spurr.

The details of the settlement, reached on Monday last week, have been kept confidential. But while New Matilda did not agree to reveal the source of the emails, it had previously consented to the continuation of an order restricting it from further publication of Professor Spurr’s emails.

A Sydney University investigation into the matter found that none of the recipients of Professor Spurr’s racist emails were academics on its payroll.

With AAP.