An upcoming hearing convened by the University of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents will make a final decision about whether a professor and former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse will be stripped of tenure and fired for making and performing in pornographic videos online. The professor, Joseph Gow, is unashamed of his online activities, which he says is free expression protected by his tenured status. 

Mr. Gow has so far retained his tenured position, having been fired from the chancellorship last year after state authorities discovered what it called “abhorrent” online  behavior. This includes performing in pornographic videos for OnlyFans with his wife, Carmen Wilson, and running a YouTube channel where he and Ms. Wilson cooked vegan meals with adult film stars. 

UW-La Crosse’s faculty committee unanimously recommended Mr. Gow, a professor of communications, be fired in July. To fire a tenured professor, whose right to free speech is inviolable, the university needed to establish “cause,” or actionable disciplinary infractions. The university found that Mr. Gow violated school policy by referencing his university job in his pornographic videos; hiring “sex workers” within an hour of campus and creating a conflict of interest when he invited a “sex worker,” porn star Nina Hartley, 65, to speak on campus after he met her at a video shoot.  

The UW System Board of Regents committee then scheduled the forthcoming hearing, with oral arguments set for September 20, according to a document provided by Mr. Gow and reviewed by the Sun.  Following the hearing, the committee will hold a closed session to make its final recommendation regarding Mr. Gow’s tenured status, and give its recommendation to the full board for consideration at an upcoming meeting, which could be as soon as September 26.

“It’s taking a lot longer than I would have liked,” Mr. Gow tells the Sun in an interview. “I think that this is a very serious matter, to try to fire a tenured faculty member over material they posted on the internet. And so I think the administration is being very cautious with this.”

He says he feels that he’s “being treated like a criminal” by the university as the decision looms. 

“It’s a very uncomfortable feeling,” he says, adding that he was sent a document letting him know that he was on leave until further notice. “As part of that leave I’m not allowed to go on campus without a police escort,” he says, adding that he finds it “repressive.” 

When he was fired as chancellor, Mr. Gow lost his $250,000 a year administrator’s salary but has maintained his $90,000 a year professor’s wages. During his time in limbo, Mr. Gow says that he and his wife are maintaining their YouTube and OnlyFans accounts. The YouTube cooking account, “Sexy Happy Couple,” where the couple is fully clothed, doesn’t make them any money, he says, but their sexually explicit OnlyFans account generates revenue that the couple will likely rely on should he lose his tenured position. 

“On the OnlyFans site, we do have people that will pay to access our videos, the sexually explicit parts,” he says. “And we don’t make a whole lot of money there, but we are very worried that if the regents do fire me from my tenured position, how we’re going to pay our medical insurance. So, we are generating a few thousand dollars a month that ought to be able to cover that if the worst happens.”

Mr. Gow has for months maintained that the issue is one of free speech, arguing that it’s hypocritical of the university to uphold “academic freedom and freedom of expression” as its policies while being opposed to his porn content which was made on his “own time and on vacation.” 

“It is unprecedented,” he says of his ongoing saga. “I don’t think we’ve really seen this situation anywhere before.” 

The Sun reached the UW System, which said it can’t comment as it’s an “ongoing personnel matter.” 

Mr. Gow’s online activities were long available for all to see, while he was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, though he didn’t use his name. It wasn’t until university administrators discovered that Mr. Gow was producing porn last year that he was dismissed from his chancellorship and the university system began proceedings to strip him of his tenure and fire him completely. The UW System regent president, Karen Walsh, said that he had “shown a reckless disregard for the role he was entrusted with at UW-La Crosse to serve students, faculty and staff, and the campus community.” 

“We are alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions, which were wholly and undeniably inconsistent with his role as chancellor,” she added. In a list of charges issued earlier this year and reviewed by the Sun, the university accused him of “unethical and potentially illegal conduct,” failure to cooperate with investigators, and inappropriate use of the school computers and his email account.