University of Wisconsin-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow was removed from his post on Wednesday for making sexually explicit and X-rated videos with his wife and others on social media and porn websites.
The Board of Regents unanimously voted to terminate Gow's chancellorship and place him on administrative leave. The board named Betsy Morgan as interim chancellor and will hire an outside law firm to investigate Gow, who was set to retire at the end of the school year.
University of Wisconsin President Jay Rothman said in a statement that Gow will transition to a faculty role, but that he had filed a complaint with Morgan to review Gow's status as a tenured member.
"Upon my recommendation, the UW Board of Regents today terminated Dr. Joe Gow from his position as chancellor of UW-La Crosse effective immediately. In recent days, we learned of specific conduct by Dr. Gow that has subjected the university to significant reputational harm. His actions were abhorrent," Rothman said.
Rothman did not say how the board learned of the videos.
Gow, 63, was the longest-tenured chancellor in the UW system. He was denied a pay raise five years ago for inviting former porn actress and activist Nina Hartley to speak at a free speech event on the UW-La Crosse campus. Hartley is featured in one of the "sexy healthy cooking" videos that Gow and his wife, Carmen Wilson, published to YouTube.
While those videos are PG-13 in nature, Gow and Wilson published videos to LoyalFans in which they had sex with their cooking show guests.
Gow said Wednesday night that he was not invited to the three-hour board meeting and accused the board of violating his First Amendment rights to free speech. Further, he said he did not identify himself as being associated with the UW system in any of the videos.
"I would say that anything that I do or my wife and I do, we do as citizens in the United States, who have the freedom of First Amendment to the Constitution, to create and publish books and videos that explore consensual adult sexuality," Gow told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "I just think we have people on the board that say they're for free speech, but they really aren't.
"And I don't know how they will explain this."