LA CROSSE, Wis. — The University of Wisconsin-La Crosse has held a hearing to decide the fate of a veteran University of Wisconsin professor, who was removed from his post as chancellor last year due to unremorsefully creating and appearing in adult content.
As XBIZ reported, professor of communications Joe Gow was fired as chancellor on the recommendation of Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman, who called the professor’s actions — including posting adult videos with his wife on their OnlyFans account — “abhorrent.”
Rothman told Gow in December that he was also initiating a process to challenge his tenured faculty position in communication studies.
“To retain my tenure, I need to defend myself before a faculty tribunal,” Gow wrote in a recent piece about his situation for the Chronicle of Higher Education. “I look forward to doing so.”
At the tribunal, Wade Harrison, senior legal counsel for the Universities of Wisconsin, said the school “has cause to remove former Chancellor Joe Gow from his faculty position, including unethical behavior and insubordination,” Wisconsin Public Radio reported.
Harrison laid out the case for removing Gow in front of a faculty senate committee during the first day of the two-day hearing process.
Gow delivered an opening statement in his own defense, calling the administration’s charges “irrelevant, inconsequential, misleading, distorted and downright false.”
“Tenure is based on the quality of one’s teaching, research and service,” Gow noted. “These bogus charges have nothing to do with that and they raise the question: do faculty have the right to engage in free speech in their personal lives, particularly on contemporary social media?”
Main Image: University of Wisconsin communications professor Joe Gow, with wife Carmen Wilson and performer Lauren Phillips
