Professors say vague rules have prompted self-censorship
Two Texas Tech University professors left their posts this year after saying Chancellor Brandon Creighton’s directives affected their work. Lisa Limeri earned tenure at Texas Tech this spring and left shortly afterward for a position in Rhode Island, saying the university’s restrictions drove her decision entirely. The biology professor had built a life at the university over five years. “I loved my life there,” Limeri said. “I had the most wonderful colleagues in that department, the most wonderful students.”
Limeri believed the policies would prevent her from teaching biology accurately and would constrain her research. “I would rather be untenured with academic freedom than tenured at Texas Tech University,” she said. “The censorship is so severe and so damaging and so unacceptable that I uprooted my very happy life and moved across the country.” History professor Jacob Bell, who taught at Texas Tech for three years, left earlier this year for a job in New York, saying the restrictions would interfere with his ability to teach works such as The Odyssey, in which the Greek goddess Athena takes both male and female forms.
Inside classrooms, the effects reached assigned books, subjects discussed and material drawn from professors’ own research. Deena Varner, an assistant professor of practice in English who has taught at Texas Tech for five years, said she was pressured to remove course material involving The Silence of the Lambs because its villain, Buffalo Bill, could be interpreted as transgender. “I tend to teach about structures of power, and that often includes relationships related to gender, sexuality, race, class, ethnicity, so it impacts me directly quite a bit,” Varner said.
Paul Ingram, an associate professor of psychology at Texas Tech, said the restrictions affected how he teaches about suicide, including discussion of differences in suicide risk among men and women. He said the policies created a conflict between following university rules and giving students the level of training he believes the science demands. “I think that hurts Texas Tech. I think it hurts my career. I think it hurts my students. I think it hurts education,” Ingram said. “It hurts the mission of this university.”
Some effects were less visible than an explicitly prohibited lesson. Sara Spurgeon, another English professor, said faculty members fearful of discipline had avoided teaching texts central to their fields. “So many faculty in English and other departments, reasonably fearful of disciplinary action, have simply preemptively censored their own texts instead of teaching the texts that are the most important in their field,” Spurgeon said. Spurgeon, two years from retirement after more than two decades at Tech, said she was also pressured to pull back from subjects she had spent years researching, including gender, race and sexuality in literature of the American West. She continued teaching them. “Despite multiple emails making clear to them that I’m teaching this anyway. I mean, maybe this interview will be the nail in my coffin. It is possible,” she said. “If they’re gonna fire me for doing my job to the best of my ability, then go ahead.”
Amy Reid, director of PEN America’s Freedom to Learn program, said vague and broadly construed prohibitions can increase a policy’s reach. “When prohibitions come down from above that are not clear, but are vague and broadly construed, it increases their impact,” Reid said. “It’s a design principle, not a design flaw.”
On a recent Wednesday morning, a small group gathered outside the Texas Tech library behind a folding table in a spot known to students as the “free speech area.” Flyers spread across the table listed Homer’s The Odyssey, William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick. Students streamed past on their way to and from class. Most kept walking. Every so often, someone lingered long enough to ask what the list was about. The people behind the table were Texas Tech professors, and the listed works were examples of texts they said could run afoul of the new rules.
Varner said she and her colleagues had spoken with hundreds of students since they began tabling nine months ago. They continued after university administrators instructed faculty not to discuss the policies with students. Texas Tech administrators warned that faculty who did not comply with the policies could face disciplinary action. “Everyone is walking around really afraid of doing the wrong thing, saying the wrong thing, teaching the wrong thing,” Varner said. “Because everyone has a gender identity and everyone has sexual orientation, what it means to not be able to talk about those things is really unclear.”
Varner said she continued the work in part because she regarded exercising her rights as a civic duty. “It’s a scary time,” Varner said. “One of the things that I try to tell myself every morning is that I have rights and it’s my civic duty to exercise my rights, and that’s one of the things that kind of keeps me going.”
The restrictions began taking shape shortly after Brandon Creighton became chancellor of the Texas Tech University System in November 2025. During his first five months on the job, Creighton issued two directives, one in December 2025 and another in April 2026, outlining what could be taught across the system. Together, the policies restrict how professors teach about race, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity and call for phasing out academic programs centered on those topics.
Before becoming chancellor, Creighton spent more than a decade in the Texas Senate, where he chaired the higher education committee. He authored Senate Bill 17 in 2023 and, two years later, spearheaded Senate Bill 37, which gave university governing boards greater authority over curriculum and required regular reviews of core courses. SB 17 banned diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs at public universities while explicitly exempting classroom instruction and academic research.
Texas Tech is among the state’s 45 public universities navigating the changes, which continued in 2025 with new state oversight of university curricula. NPR characterized Texas Tech’s policies as some of the state’s most sweeping restrictions on how professors can teach about race, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation. The enacted SB 37 prohibits core courses from requiring students to adopt beliefs that one race, sex, ethnicity, or social, political or religious belief is inherently superior to another. An earlier version would also have barred core courses from teaching identity politics or theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression or privilege are inherent in U.S. institutions; lawmakers removed that language before the bill passed. After becoming chancellor, Creighton imposed restrictions at Texas Tech on some of the same subjects lawmakers removed from his bill.
Creighton described the law as a “floor” for what Texas Tech could do, signaling that the system’s policies could go beyond what the Legislature required. He also pushed back on some professors and students who described the restrictions as censorship. “I think that it’s easy to throw those types of terms around, but at the end of the day, we have to make decisions, and decisions that are centered around what is best for our students and the future workforce that we see on the horizon,” Creighton said in an April interview with Everything Lubbock. “I think that it’s appropriate.” Creighton’s office and the Texas Tech University System Board of Regents did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
Creighton has found support among some conservative students. In August, Preston Parsons, president of Texas Tech’s Turning Point USA chapter, described the policies as a return to “biblical truth.” Parsons declined an NPR request for an interview.
In July, faculty groups challenged Creighton’s directives in federal court, arguing that he had effectively revived restrictions lawmakers declined to include in the final state law. The lawsuit alleges that the policies violate professors’ constitutional rights and are so vague that faculty cannot reliably determine what they are allowed to teach.
Students have organized in opposition as well. Aaron Texidor, a 19-year-old finance major, helped found Raiders Against Censorship earlier in the year with Maddox Guillen, 19, and James Snoddy, 20. The group has organized against the restrictions and worked to inform students about Creighton’s directives. Texidor said, “It’s very demoralizing,” and added, “I think the point of college is to challenge your perspectives, broaden your perspectives and make you think critically, and I don’t believe that Brandon Creighton believes that us as students have the ability to understand nuance and to understand different perspectives and to grow and be better people because of it.” Snoddy sees the restrictions as part of a broader political effort to shape what students learn and, ultimately, how they see the world. Snoddy said, “I think this will be the first step for the federal administration to look at how they can change universities, because if you can change the past, you control the present,” and added, “If you focus on what students are learning in classes, you can change their perspective so they can vote for you in the future. This is all political.”
Several Texas university systems have adopted restrictions beyond the requirements of SB 37. Texas A&M has limited teaching about race, gender and sexuality, and those policies are being challenged in federal court. Other universities have also reviewed courses, removed materials or adopted new restrictions on classroom instruction.
For Varner, the nine months of tabling have left her uncertain about her future at Texas Tech. Every professor interviewed for the story said they expect more faculty to leave over the next year. Varner and her colleagues remain outside the library, trying to make sure students know what is happening inside their classrooms. “There’s always a possibility that I’ll be disciplined. There’s a possibility that I will be terminated,” Varner said. “I’m willing to take the risk.”