Speaking with reporters in September after being fired from his job as a tenured professor at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, Joe Gow had a few choice words for the entity that fired him: the UW Board of Regents.
“We might as well take down that famous plaque on the front of Bascom Hall, because the people who fired me today aren’t a Board of Regents—they’re a Board of Hypocrites,” said Gow, who nine months earlier was also fired from his job as chancellor at the western Wisconsin university. “They have zero credibility on free speech and expression.”
The plaque on the UW–Madison campus building to which Gow refers was erected to commemorate a proclamation issued by the Regents in 1894, when they refused to fire a UW–Madison academic for expressing socialist views. It proclaims: “Whatever may be the limitations which trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe the great state University of Wisconsin should ever encourage that continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found.”
Gow, the sixty-four-year-old communications professor who served as the UW-La Crosse’s chancellor for nearly seventeen years, until December 2023, was not fired for being a socialist, a criminal, or even a bad teacher. He lost both jobs after it came to light that he and his wife, Carmen Wilson, a former academic, had been producing and appearing in pornographic videos, often with adult film performers. They also pseudonymously wrote the e-books Monogamy with Benefits: How Porn Enriches Our Relationship and Married with Benefits—Our Real-Life Adult Industry Adventures. And they host a YouTube channel called “Sexy Healthy Cooking,” in which they prepare meals with porn stars, clothes on.
Two days after Christmas in 2023, the Board of Regents hastily convened a closed meeting to discuss Gow’s newly discovered porn activities. It voted unanimously to remove him as chancellor. Universities of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman called Gow’s conduct “abhorrent,” saying he had subjected the university to “significant reputational harm.” Regents President Karen Walsh said the board was “alarmed, and disgusted, by his actions.”
These are perfectly understandable reactions. Pornography is contentious. It can be gross and exploitative. In this case, Gow probably deserved to be fired as chancellor, given how hard it would have been for him to head a large public university while also being known for his role in such films as Juicy Anniversary. But should Gow have lost his job as a tenured professor? That’s a question the U.S. Supreme Court may be called upon to decide.
In 2023, this column reported on the firing of an elementary school counselor who attended an anti-trans rally where she declared “fuck transgenderism,” among similar sentiments. In this contested case, still pending in the courts, David Cole, the American Civil Liberties Union’s national legal director, felt the counselor’s firing was appropriate: “Public employees can be terminated for speech off the job if it undermines their ability to perform their jobs.”
While arguing in favor of terminating Gow’s tenured teaching job, the UW’s attorney cited City of San Diego v. Roe, a 2004 Supreme Court ruling upholding the firing of police officer John Roe for making sexually explicit videos while wearing his police uniform. But the two cases are different: Gow did not flaunt his connection to the university, and Roe did not have academic tenure and its attendant protections for speech.
Gow and his attorney, Mark Leitner, have vowed to file a lawsuit in federal court against the Universities of Wisconsin and the UW Regents challenging his firing as a tenured professor. It will not seek to overturn his dismissal as chancellor, a role Gow was already planning to relinquish.
Photo provided
Carmen Wilson, left, and Joe Gow.
Leitner, in an email exchange, concedes that the law “affords universities greater (but not unlimited) discretion in terminating the employment of a top administrator” than it does for firing tenured faculty. But Leitner maintains that Gow’s termination as chancellor was also “based exclusively on the content of his expression.”
After being booted from his job as chancellor, Gow had this to say: “My wife and I live in a country where we have a First Amendment. We’re dealing with consensual adult sexuality. The Regents are overreacting. They’re certainly not adhering to their own commitment to free speech or the First Amendment.” He called his porn production a “hobby” pursued on his own time.
For obvious reasons, Gow’s case has drawn national and even international attention. As it plays out in the courts, the “Sexy Happy Couple” of Gow and Wilson, as they call themselves, are continuing to collect payments of about $3,000 per month from views of their videos on the website OnlyFans.
Gow’s termination from his tenured teaching job came in phases. In June, an academic committee made up of five of his UW-La Crosse colleagues held a two-day hearing that resembled a trial. Gow represented himself, Wilson at his side. The star witness was Betsy Morgan, who succeeded Gow as chancellor.
“Besides just the jokes, which are no longer funny, we don’t want to be known as PornU,” Morgan said. “We want to be known for the quality of our academic programs.”
In July, the committee unanimously recommended Gow’s termination.
On September 20, a hearing was held before the Regents’ six-member personnel committee. This time, Gow had legal representation—the aforementioned Leitner, a Milwaukee attorney hired by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a Philadelphia-based group that defends campus speech.
The Regents, in a brief filed prior to the hearing, said a public university’s survival “is dependent on legislative funding, grant funding, tuition revenue, and donations. Gow’s behavior, left to continue, could negatively affect all four.” The UW-La Crosse said it heard from major donors who threatened to pull funds unless Gow was fired. And a state lawmaker called for “the most decisive action possible” lest other consequences ensue.
But FIRE argued that “universities cannot betray the First Amendment merely to save face—or appease donors.” And Leitner told the committee: “You don’t need the First Amendment to protect easy and comforting speech. It’s exactly the opposite. We need the First Amendment precisely when the danger of stifling, controversial, unpopular speech is at its highest.”
Attorneys for the university contended, as Scott Bauer of The Associated Press artfully expressed it, that Gow “has established he is unable to recognize his own poor judgment.” His continued employment, they said, posed “a serious risk” to the university. Its “reputation has been harmed, and the harm will undoubtedly be worsened if Gow is returned to the classroom.”
On September 27, after receiving the personnel committee’s recommendation, the full Board of Regents voted unanimously to fire Gow from his tenured teaching position.
In a post on the social media site X, FIRE called Gow’s termination “a major blow to academic freedom and faculty free speech rights.” It insisted that “public universities cannot sacrifice the First Amendment to protect their reputations.”
During the same week that Gow got the heave-ho, FIRE noted, two other blows were delivered to the free speech rights of tenured professors. The University of Pennsylvania suspended law professor Amy Wax for her far-right views on race and gender. And Muhlenberg College, also in Pennsylvania, fired tenured anthropology professor Maura Finkelstein for her pro-Palestinian advocacy.
“[W]e’re living in a time where more academics have been punished for what they say or write than during the Red Scare,” FIRE wrote.
Gow has suggested his case could be headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, given how much time has passed since City of San Diego v. Roe in 2004. “At that point, you know, Twitter, YouTube, xHamster, OnlyFans, they didn’t even exist.”
Ah, the good old days.
If the Justices on the Supreme Court cared a lick about consistency, they would rule in Gow’s favor, given the Court’s expansive view of the protections of the First Amendment in recent years. For example, it allowed interest groups to spend unlimited amounts on elections (Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 2010). It upheld the right of a public high school football coach to lead his team in prayer (Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, 2022). And it decreed that a wedding web-page designer could refuse business from same-sex couples (303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 2023).
The Court’s conservative supermajority, however, tends to be more ideological than consistent. Justice Clarence Thomas’s legendary interest in the cinematic exploits of Long Dong Silver aside, there is every reason to fear the Court’s far-right flank will seize this opportunity to crush a “porn-loving professor” and curtail the protections of tenure at the same time. They may, like the Board of Regents, let their revulsion dictate their response, to the detriment of all.
No matter what happens, Gow and Wilson will remain free to cook to their hearts’ content.