The simple story is that militant religious censorship of education in Texas is intentionally vague yet severe, making the architects appear as self-promoting villains.

Some teachers simply refuse to comply on the grounds of doing a good job.

Spurgeon, two years from retirement after more than two decades at Tech, said she’s also been pressured to pull back from teaching subjects she has spent years researching, including gender, race and sexuality in literature of the American West. She’s 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,” Spurgeon said. “If they’re gonna fire me for doing my job to the best of my ability, then go ahead.”

Others leave, on the grounds of doing a good job somewhere else.

Limeri earned tenure at Tech this spring but left shortly afterward for a position in Rhode Island, a decision she said was driven entirely by the university’s restrictions. She 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,” Limeri 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 described a similarly difficult decision. He taught history at Texas Tech for three years before leaving earlier this year for a job in New York, saying the restrictions would interfere with his ability to teach works like The Odyssey, where the Greek goddess Athena takes both male and female forms.

The censorship is so absurdly drafted that even the lack of enforcement generates widespread resistance.