Joe Gow’s tenured professional status has been hanging in limbo for months.
Photo credit by Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed | Universities of Wisconsin | Joe Gow
Wisconsin universities fire Joe Gow for a second time over his porn double life: The Board of Regents voted unanimously Friday to remove him from his professorship.
Gow was fired as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse late last year, after sex videos of Gow and his wife, Carmen Wilson, surfaced on adult websites. UW program president Jay Rothman called Gow’s actions “reprehensible” and accused him of causing “significant damage to the reputation” of the university in a statement echoed by board leadership.
Despite being sacked as chancellor, Gow has retained his professional role to this day.
The process
Although it took the UW Board of Regents less than an hour to announce the decision on Friday, Gow’s fate has been on hold for months. Gow was fired almost immediately from his chancellorship, but tenure protections allowed him to continue working while on leave.
The Regents fired him from his faculty position for allegedly engaging in “unlawful and potentially illegal conduct” related to his pornographic images, refusing to cooperate with an investigation in December after pornographic videos surfaced online and violating information technology policies.
Gow—who makes sex videos and vegan cooking videos with his wife and the occasional adult film star—rejected UW’s allegations of impropriety and pointed to calls from state attorneys general to call for it to be revoked, saying the program is bowing to political pressure. Gow has also argued to the media and in two separate interviews that his actions are protected by the First Amendment and that his online activities will not interfere with his teaching duties.
On Friday, the UW Board of Regents rejected those arguments.
In a statement released Friday morning, Gow accused the Board of Regents of violating his free speech rights and indicated he plans to sue.
“The regents say they want to protect and promote free speech, but their actions today demonstrate that this is not true,” Gow wrote. “At the end of last year, when they fired me as chancellor, they said it was because the letters and videos that my wife Carmen and I put on the Internet were ‘disgusting’ and ‘disgusting.’ And now, after a long and fraudulent process, they fired me as a member of the faculty, again. ”
He also called the regents a “Board of Hypocrites,” saying they were reversing the UW’s commitment to academic freedom and free speech by firing him because of his provocative video and book productions.
Other free speech groups, including the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, also criticized the UW’s decision to fire him.
“In a major violation of academic freedom and intellectual free speech rights, the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents has suspended Professor Joe Gow for producing sexually graphic content after hours,” FIRE defense attorney Zach Greenberg said in a statement. “FIRE has repeatedly said: public universities cannot sacrifice the First Amendment to protect their reputation. We are disappointed that UW has surrendered to donors and politicians by throwing a tenured professor under the bus.”
Source link
