Vegan porn fate to be decided by hearing Chancellor Joseph Gow

An upcoming hearing convened by the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents will make a final decision on whether a professor and former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse will be removed from his position and fired for making and starring in online pornographic videos. The professor, Joseph Gow, is unashamed of his online activities, which he says fall under the freedom of speech protected by his tenured status.

Mr Gow has so far retained his permanent position, having been fired from the chancellery last year after state authorities uncovered what they called “disgusting” online behaviour. This included starring 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.

In July, the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse faculty committee unanimously recommended firing Mr. Gow, a professor of communications. To fire a tenured professor, whose right to free speech is inviolable, the university had to show “cause” or actionable disciplinary violations. The university found that Mr. Gow violated school policy by referencing his university job in his pornographic videos, hiring “sex workers” an hour away from campus and creating a conflict of interest when he invited a “sex worker,” porn star Nina Hartley, 65, to speak on campus after meeting her on a video shoot.

The UW System board committee then scheduled the upcoming hearing, with oral arguments set for Sept. 20, according to a document provided by Mr. Gow and reviewed by the Sun. After the hearing, the committee will hold a closed session to make its final recommendation regarding Mr. Gow’s tenure and present its recommendation to the full board for consideration at a future meeting, which could be as early as Sept. 26.

“It’s taking a lot longer than I would have liked,” Mr. Gow told The Sun in an interview. “I think it’s a very serious matter, trying to fire a tenured professor because of documents he posted on the Internet. So I think the administration is being very careful about this.”

He said he felt he was being “treated like a criminal” by the university as the decision approached.

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

When he was fired as chancellor, Mr. Gow lost his $250,000-a-year administrator salary but kept his $90,000-a-year professor salary. During this vacancy, Mr. Gow says he and his wife are keeping 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 income that the couple would likely rely on if they lose their tenure.

“On the OnlyFans site, we have people paying to access our videos, the sexually explicit parts,” he says. “And we don’t make a lot of money there, but we’re very concerned about how we’re going to pay for our health insurance if the regents fire me from my permanent position. So we’re generating a few thousand dollars a month that should be able to cover that cost if the worst were to happen.”

Mr Gow has maintained for months that the issue is one of free speech, saying it is hypocritical of the university to defend “academic freedom and free speech” as policy while objecting to his pornographic content made “on his own time and on vacation”.

“It’s an unprecedented situation,” he said of the ongoing saga. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything like this anywhere before.”

The Sun reached out to the UW system, which said it could not comment because it was an “ongoing personnel matter.”

Mr. Gow’s online activities had been visible for a long time, when he was chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, although he did not use his name. It was only when university administrators discovered Mr. Gow was producing porn last year that he was removed as chancellor and the university system began proceedings to remove him from his position and terminate him altogether. University system President Karen Walsh said he had “shown a reckless disregard for the role he was entrusted with at UW-La Crosse, serving students, faculty and staff, and the campus community.”

“We are alarmed and disgusted by his actions, which are completely and undeniably incompatible with his role as chancellor,” she added. In a list of charges published earlier this year and seen by The Sun, the university accuses him of “unethical and potentially illegal conduct,” refusing to cooperate with investigators and inappropriate use of school computers and his email account.