LA CROSSE, Wis. — The Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents has scheduled a final hearing regarding the UW-La Crosse faculty tribunal’s recommendation to strip veteran professor of communications Joe Gow of tenure for unremorsefully creating and appearing in adult content.
The hearing is now scheduled for Sept. 20 at Vilas Hall at UW-Madison, the La Crosse Tribune reported.
“Oral arguments will be conducted in an open meeting and will be offered by either Gow or his lawyer, Mark Leitner, and by either Wade Harrison and Jennifer Lattis with the UW system’s legal counsel office,” the Tribune explained, adding that the hearing “will be done with the Regent’s personnel matters committee, not the entire board” after which the committee “will craft a recommendation in closed session that the full Board of Regents could consider at an upcoming meeting,” which could be as early 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 where Gow was made to defend himself before a faculty tribunal. After the hearing, the tribunal recommended that Gow be stripped of tenure.
At the tribunal, Wade Harrison, senior legal counsel for the Universities of Wisconsin, laid out the case for removing Gow in front of a faculty senate committee.
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 unrelated sex work.