LA CROSSE, Wis. – The Board of Regents of the Universities of Wisconsin has scheduled a final hearing on the UW-La Crosse faculty tribunal’s recommendation that veteran communications professor Joe Gow be stripped of his post for relentlessly creating and appearing in adult content.
The hearing is now scheduled for Sept. 20 in Vilas Hall at UW-Madison, the La Crosse Tribune reported.
“Arguments will be made in an open meeting and will be presented by Gow or his attorney, Mark Leitner, and by Wade Harrison and Jennifer Lattis at the UW System Legal Counsel,” the Tribune explained, adding that the hearing “will be done with the Regents Committee on Personnel Affairs, not with the entire board,” after which the committee “will, in closed session, prepare a recommendation that the full Board of Regents could consider at an upcoming meeting,” which will be as early as September 26 could be. -27 at UW-Parkside.
As XBIZ reported, Gow was fired as chancellor at the recommendation of University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman, who called the professor’s actions — including posting adult videos featuring his wife to their OnlyFans account — “appalling.” .
Rothman told Gow in December that he had initiated a process to challenge his tenured faculty position in communication studies. The trial resulted in a hearing where Gow had to defend himself before a faculty court. After the hearing, the tribunal recommended that Gow be stripped of his term of office.
At the tribunal, Wade Harrison, senior legal counsel for the Universities of Wisconsin, presented the case for Gow’s removal to a faculty senate committee.
Gow gave an opening statement in defense of himself, stating: “Tenure is based on the quality of one’s teaching, research and service. These false accusations have nothing to do with that and they beg the question: Do teachers have the right to engage in freedom of expression in their personal lives, especially on today’s social media?”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) published a statement in support of Gow in July.
Academic authorities were initially spurred to take action against Gow by publications owned by Rupert Murdoch, as part of an ongoing nationwide trend of Republican and conservative activists and operators running stigmatizing smear campaigns that targeted the livelihoods of individuals in various strata of the population on their unrelated issues. sex work.