LA CROSSE, Wis. — The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents has scheduled a final hearing to weigh a faculty tribunal’s recommendation to strip veteran UW professor of communications Joe Gow of tenure for unremorsefully creating and appearing in adult content.
The hearing, which will be an open meeting of the Board of Regents personnel matters committee, is scheduled for Sept. 20 at UW-Madison’s Vilas Hall, the La Crosse Tribune reported. The paper noted that oral arguments will be offered by Gow or his lawyer, Mark Leitner, and by either Wade Harrison or Jennifer Lattis of the UW system’s legal counsel office. Harrison is senior legal counsel for the Universities of Wisconsin and previously laid out the case for removing Gow in front of a faculty senate committee.
The personnel matters committee will then meet in closed session before making a recommendation for the full Board of Regents to consider at an upcoming meeting, possibly as soon as Sept. 26-27 at UW-Parkside.
As XBIZ reported, 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 had initiated a process to challenge his tenured faculty position in communication studies. The process resulted in a hearing during which Gow was required to defend himself before a faculty tribunal. After the hearing, the tribunal recommended that Gow be stripped of tenure.
At the tribunal, Gow delivered an opening statement in his own defense, asserting, “Tenure is based on the quality of one’s teaching, research and service. 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?”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) published a statement in July in support of Gow.
Academic authorities were originally egged on to take action against Gow by Rupert Murdoch-owned publications, as part of an ongoing, nationwide trend of Republican and conservative activists and operators waging stigmatizing smear campaigns targeting the livelihoods of individuals in diverse walks of life over their sex work, even when it is unrelated to their other occupations and activities.