Is That Our Chancellor in the Porno?

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In This Episode

Months after he’d announced his coming retirement as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse, Joe Gow made a fateful decision: He posted on the internet pornographic videos of himself and his wife. Wisconsin’s Board of Regents promptly fired him as chancellor and, more recently, terminated him as a tenured professor. His case presents some thorny First Amendment questions that are expected to play out in court. Meantime, Gow spoke with The Chronicle’s Jack Stripling about how he balanced his X-rated private hobby with his important public job — and what motivated him to release those videos.

Related Reading:

• A Chancellor is Fired for Porn Videos
• I Made Porn. That Shouldn’t Cost Me Tenure.
• U. of Wisconsin System President Reprimands La Crosse Chancellor for Bringing Porn Star to Campus

Guest: Joe Gow, former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse

Transcript

This transcript was produced using a speech recognition software. It was reviewed by production staff, but may contain errors. Please email us at collegematters@chronicle.com if you have any questions.

Jack Stripling This is College Matters from The Chronicle. I’m Jack Stripling.

Joe Gow So this scandal that really the regents and the system president, they were the ones that made it a scandal. I mean, we could have resolved this more, you know, quietly, but they wanted everyone to know, ‘Hey, we’re firing in this guy because he made pornography with his wife and put it on the internet.’ That hasn’t damaged the reputation of the university at all. I don’t see any evidence of that.

Jack Stripling Today on the show, we’re going to play for you a recent conversation that I had with Joe Gow. You might not remember Joe Gow’s name, but you may remember his story. In late 2023, a couple of days after Christmas, the University of Wisconsin’s Board of Regents fired Dr. Gow as chancellor of the La Crosse campus. The board was, in its president’s words, disgusted to learn that Joe Gow had filmed pornographic videos with his wife and posted them online. I’ve been writing about college leadership for about 20 years, and I’ve covered a lot of firings, but I’d never seen a story quite like this. College chancellors are people. They have imperfect judgment. Sometimes their private lives disrupt their public roles. But releasing pornographic videos of yourself while running a campus? That was a new one for me. So I wanted to know more about how all this happened. How did Joe Gow’s private hobby become a public scandal? And yes, what was he thinking? Here’s the interview.

Jack Stripling Joe, thanks for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

Joe Gow Great to be here, Jack. It’s an honor to speak with you.

Jack Stripling A lot of people probably first heard about you in late 2023 when the University of Wisconsin fired you as chancellor of the La Crosse campus, and the country would soon learn that you had appeared in pornographic videos with your wife that you posted online. The university’s president at the time described this as abhorrent behavior. And your case has some interesting free speech dimensions. And I want to talk to you about that. But I think we should start by looking a little further back. How did you get into making pornography?

Joe Gow Well, it’s a really complex answer to that. And it’s something that my wife, Carmen, and I did together. And, you know, we were both um coming out of other marriages that failed and we were in mid-life. And so it’s a question of ‘let’s talk about what we’re really looking for in a relationship.’ And we were looking for something that was sexually exciting and uh, you know, kind of a more open relationship, if you will, although we tried polyamory and that was not for us at all. We had to find a way to do something together that was interesting. And so through a lot of trial and error, some of it comic, we ended up finding that we liked to shoot videos together, and then we found our way into the mainstream adult industry. But all of this was secret and it was just for us. Nobody else knew about it but Carmen and me. And it really enhanced the intimacy in our relationship and we enjoyed it a great deal. And then, you know, we reached a point where we said, I wonder what people who are interested in this kind of material would make of it. And that’s when we decided to put some videos out onto websites. And, you know, we never dreamed that people would notice them or care about them. Certainly didn’t think we’d have this kind of notoriety that we’ve ended up receiving. So it’s been really a highly unusual odyssey. But the key is that we do it together.

Jack Stripling And I want to clarify for the listeners that years go by here, right? You got married to Carmen Wilson, who’s also an academic, in 2014, I believe.

Joe Gow That’s correct. Yeah.

Jack Stripling And the videos were not publicly released until, what, 2023? Something like that. Is that right?

Joe Gow Yeah, that’s correct.

Jack Stripling You talked about some of the reasons that you got into this. Talk to me just about the mechanics of getting into it. I assume you have to get equipment, for example.

Joe Gow Yeah. We, you know, very early on we decided let’s experiment with this. And so we went to our local electronics store and we asked about a, what you call a camcorder back then, which was a, you know, video recording camera. And the woman at the store asked Carmen, ‘What are you going to shoot with this?’ And it was very unexpected. And Carmen said stuff. And the clerk said, ‘Well, like sports?’ Yeah, that’s it. And, well, then you’re going to need a tripod. So we did get a camera and a tripod, and then we had our own experiments, just the two of us. And we found that that was a lot of fun. You know, initially it’s unusual. It’s I mean, it’s not something that we had ever done before. You know, we met some people from that industry at a conference and they said, you know, yeah, you could work with actual professional people if you wanted to. You, of course, need to pay them. You need to work with their agent. You need to get tested for STDs, which is very rigorous in that industry. And so we had some experiments, again, using our own equipment with people who are professionals who were visiting a conference.

Jack Stripling I want to clarify, this is probably a conference for people who make pornography, not an academic conference.

Joe Gow Yeah, that’s right. This is called Exxxotica, and it’s a gathering of people who are interested in sexuality. And it’s actually a very popular thing. It moves around the country from Chicago to New York to Dallas to D.C., you know, a regular event. And so we met those people and we started doing some things with them. And through that, we found that, hey, there are studios that this is their primary business. These are big companies that have 50 or 60 employees that shoot videos all the time. And we thought it would be fun to do a video with a professional studio and not have to worry about the equipment or, you know, the lighting or anything like that. And we did. And that gives our work a much higher quality than a lot of things that you see that couples make on their own.

Jack Stripling I want to talk about sort of the progression here, Joe. Not to fixate, but just to understand. You’re newlyweds. You talk about having a more interesting sex life, that leads you to filming your own pornographic films with your wife for a private collection. Then you start attending events with other people who make pornography — this Exxxotica Conference that you mention, I think, in Chicago. And then at a certain point, you and your wife start working with larger crews, other performers in the industry, that sort of thing. Is that, do I have the trajectory correct?

Joe Gow Yeah, that’s right. And it’s very important to note that we were paying to do that. We were not paid. That was something that was a real source of confusion, once the people at the University of Wisconsin system found out about this, they actually thought that, you know, I was having and Carmen a career in pornography. But no, this was a hobby. And we were paying these professionals to work with us.

Jack Stripling I think it is a little confusing to people because in part, the first year that you describe or months or what have you, this is a couple doing something privately within their sex lives. As you broaden this, it starts to get more professionalized. It starts to involve crews, it starts to involve other people. Presumably it involves you spending money to produce these films. Did you have an eye toward these becoming public at some point, or were you just making an ever more sophisticated home movie?

Joe Gow Well, we wanted to make an ever more sophisticated home movie. And, you know, the other thing we found — you know, I mentioned earlier, we had experimented with polyamory – we found that if you are paying professional people to shoot a video with you, it’s perfect for what we were looking for because there’s no expectation of any ongoing relationship. There’s no emotional baggage. I mean, it is what it is. And that was a real revelation for us. But the notion that they someday might be seen, yeah, that was something that we were thinking, well, once we retire, we would have the freedom to do that. And this is where it’s really more Carmen’s story than it is mine. In her career, there were some very bad experiences. You know, really, I guess it would be better for her to tell the story.

Jack Stripling Joe, I really think that we should do this interview together and focus on you. You’re the Chancellor. You know, that’s why we’re… that’s why we’re talking to you.

Joe Gow Yeah. Okay. Well, anyway, she was really soured on her career in academia. We started thinking about transitions.

Jack Stripling So before you release them, you’re making them. You talk to me about how, as you started to get a little more into this, you were thinking maybe eventually, maybe after I’m chancellor, these might become public. There might be a reason to do that. Did you think at any point during the process of making these — you were doing them privately — maybe this isn’t such a good idea? I’m a guy in a really high profile job. If these were to get out, it might be a problem for me as chancellor.

Joe Gow Well, there’s always that risk, and I think we were aware of that. But, you know, we want to live our lives. And I guess it raises a really interesting question is: How much of your life does your employer really own? And that’s been a really interesting issue in this whole episode. I think that on the chancellor side, yeah, they have some latitude over what you do. But as a tenured faculty member, wow, I don’t think an employer should have anything to do with what a person does on their own time on the Internet.

Jack Stripling And nor does it sound like you’re thinking at that time, if these became public in some way — perhaps before I intended, God forbid — that could be damaging to the university, that wasn’t something you were thinking about?

Joe Gow No. And the notion that it was damaging to the university doesn’t hold up because the enrollment, I just got the numbers, went up this year and the biggest first year class in the history of the university. So this scandal that really the regents and the system president, they were the ones that made it a scandal. I mean, we could have resolved this more quietly, but they wanted everyone to know, ‘Hey, we’re firing this guy because he made pornography with his wife and put it on the Internet.’ That hasn’t damaged the reputation of the university at all. I don’t see any evidence of that.

Jack Stripling So during this period, again, going from about 2014 to 2023, as you get into this, talk to me a little bit about that process. You ended up in some far flung places, didn’t you, to do this type of work?

Joe Gow Yeah, you know, the studios, some of them have their own facilities, houses where they shoot and are, you know, in a fixed location. And then other times they’re doing stuff out in the world in like Los Angeles or Las Vegas. So we really made videos in several places. Most often it was Los Angeles because that’s where most of the industry is.

Jack Stripling And so if you’re going to shoot in Los Angeles, for example, what are you telling members of your cabinet? I’m going on a fishing vacation? Like I’m just kind of curious how that worked.

Joe Gow Well, yeah, again, this raises another interesting issue of do I have the right to just take a vacation and do what I want to do? And so, you know, we would say to people, we’re going to go to Las Vegas. And I think people just sort of assume, oh Las Vegas. And one time even Carmen, one of her colleagues, said, well, what are you going to do there? And she said, ‘The usual stuff. We’re going to eat nice dinners, sit by the pool, make some porn. Ha ha ha’. And, you know, he had no way to know that that is actually the truth. She wasn’t kidding. So I don’t think people ever would have dreamed that that was what we were doing. And so usually it was just we’re seeing friends, you know, in LA.

Jack Stripling And you didn’t tell anybody you worked with that you were engaged in this?

Joe Gow Oh, no, not at all.

Jack Stripling Why not?

Joe Gow Well, you know, I’ve always been…uh how to put this…the people that I work with, it’s completely professional. And I wouldn’t feel the need to talk about my personal life or activities with them, just as I wouldn’t ask them about theirs. You know, when they’re on vacation, I try to leave them alone. You know that, respect that boundary.

Jack Stripling Yeah. Was it interesting? Did you feel at all like you were living a double life, that you had sort of a secret taboo hobby? Was that interesting to you?

Joe Gow Well, you know, I’ve always been really good at being able to draw the line between professional career stuff and then personal matters, and also too when you’re in a leadership role, it’s, I think Charles de Gaulle once said there needs to be some distance. So I’ve always been a kind of private person, even though I’m in a public role. So this wasn’t really all that hard to, you know, keep secret and nobody else really needed to know about it.

Jack Stripling I think I’m kind of going back to what you said before about the reasons for doing this. And part of it was sexual gratification, it sounds to me. And I wonder whether there was any gratification to the idea that you were sort of getting away with it, that you were doing this in secret. Was that a, I mean, for lack of a better word, a kink for you?

Joe Gow Well, I think that this definitely has brought Carmen and me great intimacy and togetherness and bonding. And, you know, we can walk through a busy airport or we were at a football game in Minneapolis recently and just be around a lot of people and look around and say, ‘gee, I don’t imagine anybody else here has done what we’ve done.’ And that’s kind of a, you know, nice feeling to think that, well, you’re really doing something special and it’s for our marriage and our relationship, you know. So I, you know, I don’t know that I’d recommend it for everybody. But for us, it’s certainly been something that’s really special.

Jack Stripling Yeah, but being among a small group of people that do this, perhaps even the secrecy of it, it sounds like it’s something that was kind of entertaining.

Joe Gow Well, I’ll tell you, when you’re shooting the videos, it’s pure work. I mean, it really is. I mean, they also shoot still photos and that’s all posed and stop and start. And, you know, it really isn’t something that you can relax. But the people who do it are very professional about it. It’s a, you know, an 8 to 5 day. And, you know, you’re on a set and it’s all business.

Jack Stripling And most people doing this probably are not in college leadership. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe there’s, maybe there’s more I don’t know about. But did you ever have any moments in which you were making pornography, and you got sort of pulled back into being chancellor? You mentioned, you know, there’s a question here: Can I ever take a vacation?

Joe Gow Yeah. You know, obviously, email and phone calls don’t stop. And not everybody knows that you’re on vacation. So it’s sort of a how much of that do I want to pay attention to when I’m on a trip away for personal activities? And I guess probably the most interesting one in that regard was then-sitting President Barack Obama wanted to visit the UW La Crosse campus, and I was on my vacation. You know, we were shooting a video, but typically we go away for five, six days just like anybody else would on a trip. And so the office started calling about this and I stopped what we were doing. I think we were in between flights, spoke to the people at the White House and said, yeah, sure, we’d be delighted to have the president come and speak on the campus. And, you know, here are the people that you should talk to on the campus who can handle the logistics, because that wasn’t my thing anyway. And so I set that up, I mean, when you’re in a leadership role, you do a lot of connecting, like putting the right people together. And so that was all put in place. And then I enjoyed the rest of that trip and came back and was actually able to get back in time to introduce President Obama and meet him. And that’s one of the high points of my career.

Jack Stripling Was that a surreal experience at all to be on this private trip making pornography and be working with Obama’s staff?

Joe Gow It doesn’t happen every day, I will tell you that. So, yeah, that. But, you know, I’m very experienced and I’ve been in administration for a long time, so I’m quite accustomed to, you know, balancing out things and handling things. And, you know, it all works.

Jack Stripling I think I know your answer here because you mentioned that you would not have been involved in the minutia of the logistics of bringing the president to campus, that you have a staff that you trust that would be handling this. But some folks who have investigated you have brought this up as a moment in which you were derelict in your duty, like this is a big thing that’s happening for the campus. ‘Obama’s coming. The chancellor’s off shooting porn. Good lord.’ What do you make of that criticism?

Joe Gow Well, I. I think it’s unfounded. And, you know, I think the results speak for themselves in terms of we had the visit, it was very successful, and, you know, it all works out. So, you know, I think people should have the ability to have a private personal life. And, you know, if they’re on vacation, something unusual happens, they do the best they can.

Jack Stripling Let’s talk about the show you created. It’s an interesting genre mash up: a cooking show with pornography. How did this come about? How did this idea come to you? Tell me about what you produced.

Joe Gow Yeah. Carmen is a fantastic vegan cook, and I am really lucky. And this was coincidentally we married. We were both vegans before that. I think maybe that was one of those things that brought us together. You know, this interest in plant-based, as it’s called now, cooking and food. I don’t cook at all. So Carmen is a great cook and has compiled a whole bunch of recipes and is very serious about this. And one day we were in the gym and we were on the elliptical machines, and there are all kinds of monitors there for TV and the sound’s down and looked around and saw, you know, The Food Network and there are people cooking food. And I thought, wow, she would be really good at that. And then that show Fixer Upper with the couple, and I thought, you know, Carmen’s as telegenic as that person; I may be as the guy, I don’t know. And then, you know, an interview show. And we talked about it afterwards and it was like, could we do something where we interview, cause we always have enjoyed interviewing professional performers, and they’re fascinating people. And so can we integrate these things, interview, cooking show demo, and then, of course, the sex part. And this would be something really extraordinary. And the cooking shows without the sex, but the interviews, and they’re on YouTube and you can watch them and see for yourself. But we came up with this idea. To shoot a sex scene, it would be very hard to do that and the cooking demo and the interview in one day. So, we came up with a format where we shot the sex scene one day, then had the performer and crew come back the next day, and then Carmen did the cooking demo.

Jack Stripling But the concept of the show, again, sort of a cooking show that has some pornography in the middle and then you eat the food. Is that more or less the uh, how this plays out?

Joe Gow Yeah. Yeah. Typically, when the food is ready to be put in the oven or on the stove, there’s sort of a natural break. And then you say, ‘Well, we shot a scene with our guest and here it is.’ Now, as I say on YouTube, you can’t show the sexuality, so it’s not there. But we do have the full shows behind paywalls.

Jack Stripling Well, at this point, you have a full fledged concept for a show. It sounds to me like you’ve definitely at this point decided this is something that you’re going to release professionally at some future date. Am I right about that?

Joe Gow With an eye toward could Carmen get into mainstream vegan cooking down the road some day, that was really what we were exploring. You know, we sort of the sex part, we’re still not there on would that ever see a broader audience.

Jack Stripling I see. I see. So I want to ask about a story that in hindsight seems significant. After a few years, I guess, of making pornography in your private life, you invited Nina Hartley — she’s a well-known pornographic actress — to speak at the La Crosse campus. People might know her from the Paul Thomas Anderson film Boogie Nights, and she has more of a mainstream profile, I would say, than a lot of people in the business. How did this speaker engagement with Nina Hartley come about?

Joe Gow Well, you know, we were shooting a video with her and she’s fascinating. I mean, I’m sure that when Nina passes away, there will be obituaries in major media. I mean, she’s really one of a kind. And so we were shooting one of these cooking and sex shows with her and got to talking. And it turned out that she had spoken on college campuses. She’s a sex advocate, an educator. You know, she’s really experienced in these things and has written a book and, you know, chapters in books. And I thought, wow, you know, that would be really something that would be interesting to bring to UW La Crosse: a person that, you know, people don’t get to interact with on a regular basis. We were doing free speech week. This would have been 2018. And so I inquired with Nina’s managers, would we be able to book her for an appearance on the UWL campus. And we did set that up. And the talk was, I think at best mild R-rated. And it was really about the importance of consensual sexuality and the importance of safe sexuality. And these are things that we’re always working to promote among a college audience. And so we had the talk and I thought, this is not that big a deal. I mean, you know, the Madison campus has people involved in adult entertainment speak. I’ve seen that, so why not at La Crosse? And of course, the system leadership went ballistic and said, yo, you can’t have a porn star. And even though they didn’t attend the talk. They didn’t know what the talk was about. It was pure identity condemnation. And that was a big controversy.

Jack Stripling You know, you’re right. I think I know Nina Hartley has spoken on other campuses, as have other porn stars. But you as chancellor in this case are inviting a pornographic actress to speak on your campus. You didn’t give your boss a heads up about that, as far as I know. Why not?

Joe Gow Well, I think that this also comes right on the heels of the system and the leadership had just passed something called the Commitment To Academic Freedom And Freedom Of Expression. And if you read that document — and I think it’s fantastic — it says, you know, we need to not only protect but promote ideas that are going to challenge people and that will cause them to think. And maybe these ideas are seen by some people as being immoral, unwise. You know, so I am an old speech communication professor and a speech teacher. And so I thought, hey, I can take the lead on this. And, you know, I knew there would be some controversy, but I didn’t think there would — I thought surely they’ll stand by their policy and say, hey, it’s not our cup of tea, but it hasn’t…

Jack Stripling Were you trying to take the university leadership by surprise?

Joe Gow I wouldn’t put it that way. I didn’t think that it was going to get so much attention. You know, it’s like when Barack Obama spoke on the UWL campus, I didn’t call up the system president and say, hey, is it okay if Barack Obama speaks on the campus? I mean, I thought…

Jack Stripling But they knew that was going to happen before it happened. In the case of Nina Hartley, they didn’t, correct?

Joe Gow Well, I don’t know that they knew the Barack Obama appearance was going to happen before it happened um.

Jack Stripling Really?

Joe Gow Yeah, I guess.

Jack Stripling The university system didn’t know the president of the United States was coming to the campus?

Joe Gow To be honest, I’m not sure about that. I never called anybody and told them about it. I think it was in the media, so there wasn’t a need to do it.

Jack Stripling I see, I highlight this for a couple of reasons. One is I think it’s an interesting moment where a little bit of this private practice of yours and your public life are kind of beginning to merge in an interesting way. So I find that compelling. But I also wonder if it’s a moment when you’re testing the waters a little bit that you’re poking the university leadership. I think that’s why I’m asking about this permission structure.

Joe Gow Yeah, there was an element, not so much of testing or poking, but I felt we have this great policy. We were encouraged to do a free speech week event. I guess, though, I didn’t anticipate there would be such strong objection to it. I mean, we are academics. We’re supposed to be open to all kinds of ideas and trial and error. And, you know, I don’t know what harm came out of Nina Hartley speaking on the UWL campus.

Jack Stripling Joe, I completely understand what you’re saying and the rationale. I think when I talk to people in university leadership, they will say, ‘If I know something controversial is going to happen on my campus, I should tell university leadership. The board should know.’ You didn’t do that in this case.

Joe Gow You know, it’s interesting now, I was chancellor for 16 years and I worked for four different system presidents, and they all had different styles. And, you know, when I came in, the president, Kevin Reilly, who hired me, he was very hands off, do your own thing, you know, establish the identity for the campus. And he, we didn’t need to meet all the time. He was very laissez faire. So I really was accustomed to that kind of autonomy. And I think that what happened was there was a changeover where Kevin retired and a man named Ray Cross came into the role of system president, and he was very different I learned from this experience. And he really wanted to know everything in advance. And this was enlightening for me.

Jack Stripling And Ray Cross formally reprimanded you. I think maybe you had to pay Nina Hartley speaker’s fee. How did that make you feel?

Joe Gow I didn’t like that at all. I think that that’s real hypocrisy. And, you know, the speaker’s fee was $5,000. And it really is not a lot of money in the scheme of things when it comes to speakers. And we used funds that are actually I was given a car that they leased for me and I had to pay for personal use of the car. And so that’s where that money came from. That was really kind of my money to begin with, that I was paying into the system. So it wasn’t ever taxpayer dollars. And that was something that I think there was a lot of misunderstanding about that.

Jack Stripling Were you ticked off that this happened? Was it embarrassing for you to be reprimanded in such a public way?

Joe Gow I didn’t like it. No, And I think that was unfair. And, you know, these people basically called me up and said, you know, if you want to keep your job, you need to pay that $5,000, as the one person said, scratch out a check. You know, and I think that’s real hypocrisy when you’ve got that going on in private, but in public, you know, they’re saying, we’re all for free speech and free exploration of ideas and academic freedom, and then why come down on me?

Jack Stripling Stick around. We’ll be back in a minute.

[BREAK]

Jack Stripling: So let’s move to sort of a critical point in this story, Joe. You announced in August 2023 that you were planning to step down as chancellor at the end of that academic year. But just a few months later in November, I think, you made this pivotal decision. You posted pornographic videos of your wife online with you. And I’m curious why you decided to do that. What were you hoping to get out of it?

Joe Gow Well, that was more Carmen’s decision than mine. And she had had some really bad experiences with her career and people she worked for. And, you know, we always say we were treated a lot better by the people in the adult entertainment industry than people in higher education, particularly lately, when really all people the governing boards want to do is downsize and get leadership to, you know, find ways to get rid of faculty. And Carmen’s not interested in that. And so really, it was an early retirement for her. I was right on my schedule of retirement in terms of one more year as chancellor. And so we talked about, do we want to experiment a little bit and put some of the videos out there and, you know, see what happens. And, you know, as Amazon’s Jeff Bezos once famously said, you know, if you know, it’ll work, it’s not an experiment. And this is truly an experiment. And we put videos up behind paywalls on OnlyFans and LoyalFans and no one cared. I mean, maybe two or three people wanted to look. And we were talking to an editor from one of the companies that we work with, and he said, Well, sometimes the free sites, you can get a little bit better response. And so we put videos just with the two of us because there are rights issues on those free sites and actually they’re very careful with who can post on there. You have to, you know, show your license and a picture of yourself and the date and it all has to be verified. And we put one of our early videos out and, wow, suddenly people are actually watching these and we didn’t expect that. And 100 a day. 1000 a day. Several thousands. So apparently we must have hit the algorithms on the sites where they found that there’s an interest in a middle aged married couple having sex, and the quality of the video is very high.

Jack Stripling I still don’t understand why not wait until your chancellorship is done? We’re talking about you’ve got maybe six months left in that position.

Joe Gow Yeah, I think there’s an element to it of can you be who you really are? You know, and I’m a straight white male. And so I don’t you know, that’s what I know. But I would imagine it would be kind of related to a gay person wanting to just, hey, you know, I’m, this is who I am. Kind of like, you know, and I tell people this, when I was chancellor, I would have students coming and saying, well, you know, my professor is in a gay marriage and I’m uncomfortable with that. And, you know, well, it’s like people should be able to be who they are and it shouldn’t have to be a secret. So I would acknowledge we were moving in that direction. Yes.

Jack Stripling But you had been holding this privately for years. It sounds to me like part of the point was to release it while you were still a leader of a university campus. Is that right?

Joe Gow No, that really wasn’t a conscious decision. It was just the timing, you know, where we were at as a couple, not only in our careers, but just our lives, you know, and you’re not getting any younger. You know, suffice to say, we did not want to be outed the way we were. We wanted to control that. And we thought that maybe in the world of adult video, the sites on the Internet, people just respect the you know, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. The other thing is that mores/norms are changing. And, you know, whether we like it or not, the adult content on the Internet is some of the most popular material there is. There are more people that go to a site like Pornhub than go to Netflix. So, you know, really there’s a revolution going on. And I think we were interested in seeing if we could be part of that.

Jack Stripling I think the spirit of my question, Joe, is that this is a very crowded field. There’s a lot of pornography on the Internet. It’s hard to stand out. One of the things you did to stand out was to create this interesting genre mash up with the cooking show. But another thing that makes these compelling is that you are chancellor of a university campus. I’m wondering if that’s part of the business plan here at all, that you see that as a way of making this more appealing?

Joe Gow No, not at all. And we never used anything about our careers in the videos, you know.

Jack Stripling Isn’t there one in which Carmen says, ‘Joe gets recognized all the time. He’s the leader of a college campus?’

Joe Gow Yeah. And that was inadvertent. And um actually, we sort of forgot about that until we were reminded by the UW attorneys. But that happened in the video segment and we didn’t say which campus or anything like that. But, you know, in terms of, you know, you said ‘business plan’. I mean, really to a lot of people ask that, what are you hoping to do? What we want to do, Carmen and I, is keep having interesting conversations. But as far as making money off of the videos, it’s not our motivation at all. Now, because of all the attention that has been drawn to this, we do make a little bit of money on our paid sites. And, you know, my health insurance and Carmen’s health insurance were taken away when I was fired. So this few thousand dollars a month does pay for our health insurance and we’re grateful that we have that. And we are working on another book. And this one, again, it’s not done to try to make money. It’s done to tell our story fully and stimulate conversation. I mean, I guess at heart, we’re really kind of academics. That’s in our blood. That’s what we’re about. You know?

Jack Stripling Just one more question about the motivations here, since we talked about the Nina Hartley episode earlier, was there any part of you that was smarting from that, was saying, I’ll show these guys?

Joe Gow That was in my mind. It wasn’t the motivation. But certainly when I was confronted, ‘Hey we know about these books and videos,’ it was a moment where, well, are you going to back down or not? And we know the answer: No. I thought, you know, I’m not going to have a repeat of what happened with the Nina Hartley visit. That’s just how it is. I’m not going to compromise on my ideals.

Jack Stripling So there is a period of time — I don’t know how long — between when the videos become public and you actually are dismissed as chancellor. During that period, these things are kind of out there in the world, and you’re still walking around as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse. Did you get any sense that people in the community knew?

Joe Gow You know, it’s interesting in hindsight to look back and, you know, let’s remember, this happened right in between semesters. So it wasn’t really, you know, I wasn’t on campus, for example, when I was told I was fired. But I did remember at a holiday party, there was a guy that just I went up and said hello. And he really was like, Oh, I — just a very strange reaction. And I wondered, you know. Does he know about this? But I don’t think there was widespread knowledge until the firing. And then everybody knows about this now.

Jack Stripling So you and Carmen decided to post the videos online in late 2023. What were you thinking once the videos started growing in popularity? Were you nervous that your employer would find out?

Joe Gow So that really was a moment where we had to say, well, what do we do? What’s going to happen? And really, before we had time to process that, I got an email from the system attorneys saying — this is right around Christmas — we want to have a Zoom meeting and talk about a personnel matter. Yeah, I hear that all the time. So sure, I’ll meet with you. Well, we got on the call and it was, ‘This is about you and these videos and the books that you have.’ We have two books as well that we put on Amazon. And, you know, that’s when it all really… I wasn’t sure where it was going to go because this conversation was mainly about, did you make any money from these activities? Because if you make more than $1,000 a year, you have to report that on your financial disclosures. But we never — we didn’t make any money from the videos. You have to have many millions of views on the free sites to generate advertising revenue. The only way we made any money was through the book royalties. And those were never more than, you know, a few hundred dollars a year. So I thought I had satisfied the lawyer’s interest in no, there’s no issue about reporting. The conversation ended quite cordially, and I was rather puzzled as to where do we go next? Am I going to get a call from the system president saying, okay, we got an issue here, you need to do this, that or the other thing. But instead, what happened was they had a Board of Regents meeting after Christmas and fired me. And I was not asked to come to that meeting. I was not given any advance notice of the firing. It was announced on a Wednesday night and the press were told this is for this abhorrent and disgusting behavior. You know, that was rather shocking to me because now suddenly, you know, we’re getting attention, which we never would have sought.

Jack Stripling Sure. And I want to clarify for listeners that, like a lot of people in academic leadership, you were chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse campus, and they can dismiss you as an at-will employee. But you are also a tenured professor on that campus. And that’s sort of a different sticky wicket in terms of whether they can dismiss you from that role. And that’s really what became the next chapter in this sort of controversy. A faculty committee was assembled to hear your case and assess whether you should be disciplined or fired from that tenured professor role. And you wanted those hearings to be public. I want to drill in on their decision, and the one of the specific rationales, if I can. The committee recommended that you be fired as a professor based on, quote, unethical conduct. And they cite a number of instances. But I want to focus on one with you. They quote the employee handbook and they say that an employee, “shall exhibit a level of behavior supporting the best interest of the university.” And it was the committee’s determination that you failed to do that, particularly after the scandal broke, that you tried to capitalize on the controversy. When you as chancellor released pornographic material in which you were clearly identifiable, do you think you met that standard of serving the best interests of the university? Do you think you acted in the university’s best interest?

Joe Gow Well, I guess it depends how you define the university’s best interest. And I would say what excites me about being a part of the university is that we’re in the truth business. We’re searching for truth, and we do that through experimentation, trial and error. Sometimes we fail. So I’m disappointed that people don’t say, you know, okay, the university’s interest is trying new things. And that’s what happened here. And how do we make sense of it? How do we process it? You know, we fire somebody?

Jack Stripling But what’s the what’s the truth or the new thing that is being explored or presented by you being in pornographic movies?

Joe Gow The truth is that these things are becoming completely mainstream. And you talk about contemporary community standards. I see this all the time with the age of people that I hear from. Younger people are, have no problem at all with this and think it’s kind of a fun thing and a good thing. And then older people, other generations, are some of them, aghast, you know, so I think society is changing and this is a part of that change. And, you know, in time, I think this will be viewed as something that shows the transitions that were taking place in the Internet age.

Jack Stripling You’re absolutely right that it is the mission of most universities to explore the world as it is, not the world as people want it to be. And we have a lot of people doing interesting scholarship all over the country, including scholarship about sexuality. I think the distinction that people would draw in this case is that as chancellor, you’re in a different role. You have a different responsibility, and your primary responsibility is to protect the future and the image of the institution. And that perhaps putting the exploration of sexuality or even vegan food ahead of that was a warping of priorities. I just wonder what you think about that?

Joe Gow I think that I would agree with you that there should be an attempt to maintain the reputation of the institution. You know, I’m an alum of Penn State and I look back on the Jerry Sandusky scandal and, you know, just I is I don’t understand how the president at the time, Graham Spanier, could have looked the other way on that or didn’t act. But that was very different. I mean, that’s people being harmed. You know, the thing that I come back to is Carmen and I, we didn’t hurt anybody or harm anybody. And, you know, if people don’t like what we did, they don’t need to pay attention to it. I mean, so I don’t really understand that reaction. As far as this is somehow harming the university, I don’t think it is.

Jack Stripling Now, your case presented an interesting opportunity, in my view, which was to answer in a public hearing whether you can fire a tenured professor for making pornography. Do you think we’re any closer to having the answer to that question, Joe?

Joe Gow Well, unfortunately, we’re going to have to go to court to settle that one, because the process that they used, the system, the lawyers controlled every element of that. So FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, they very kindly have taken an interest in my case and have provided an attorney, Mark Leitner from Milwaukee. And he will be filing a suit on my behalf to try to get my job back and also my health benefits restored. And I think that will answer the question of can you fire a tenured faculty person for what they do on their own time, even if that is pornographic, which, by the way, is not illegal.

Jack Stripling We should say that FIRE, the Free Speech group that you referenced, sent a letter to the Board of Regents on your behalf saying they shouldn’t fire you. That what you were doing was protected under the First Amendment.

Joe Gow That’s correct. And, you know, again, I’m very grateful for their support. This is what they’re there to do. And, you know, I’m surprised, really, that we haven’t heard from the AAUP, who one would think would really want to support a tenured faculty member. I think that there’s a bit of ambiguity there because I was also chancellor and there may be this well, the guy’s an administrator, but really right now we’re talking about me as a tenured full professor.

Jack Stripling There’s a line in the faculty committee’s report that’s interesting to me. They say in part, the simple act of a faculty member creating pornographic content in their private capacity is not necessarily unethical conduct. Then of course, they go on to provide reasons that they think you should be terminated. But I am curious, the glide path here was for you to eventually go back into the classroom as a professor and teach students. I wonder whether you think that you having appeared in pornographic films in any way complicates or changes that relationship with students? I mean, it’s separate from asking whether that’s your problem. But do students who’ve seen you act in porn and then try to accept you as a professor, are you putting them in an untenable position? Is that unfair?

Joe Gow Well, two things on that. One, Carmen and I walk around. I don’t know whether I’m allowed to be on campus. They did say at one point I had to have a police escort. But we’re in the city of La Crosse and we go out and we do run into students and they want to take their pictures with us. They think this is fantastic. They think we’re getting a very bad deal. So I don’t know that they have any issues with it. As far as you know, I think there are probably some students who wouldn’t take a class with me, and that’s okay. But there are other students who would. And actually, one writer that wrote about us interviewed students and they said there was a rumor that I was coming back to teach a class and they registered for the course, and then they learned it wasn’t going to be me and they dropped it. So I certainly wouldn’t want to make anybody feel uncomfortable. I think that what was unexpected here was the level of attention this would get in mainstream media.

Jack Stripling You’re planning to file a lawsuit. I understand that FIRE is helping with this. Tell me about why you want to do that.

Joe Gow Well, there are two things. One is I really do want to teach. And I think that this has been a remarkable experience in terms of media and technology. And, you know, and it’s a cautionary tale to: I would tell students, you know, hey, if you think you want to go into adult entertainment, here are the realities that you’re going to confront. But there’s a lot to talk about. And so I’m eager to do that. But the other thing is, there’s a principle here. Do we have First Amendment rights or not? And I think that’s very important. And, you know, the Supreme Court case that is in play is a 2004 case, which is Roe vs San Diego, where a police officer for the city of San Diego was fired for appearing in a pornographic video that he was selling on eBay. And in that video, he was in a police uniform and then stripped down. So it was clearly linking it to the police. A tenured professor, I would hope, is a very different role than a police officer. And again, we’re in the business of exploring new things, you know, not upholding the law, maybe challenging the law, if you will. And then the other thing is the platforms that are material is on or was on didn’t exist in 2004. There was no YouTube, there was no Twitter, there was no Pornhub, there was no OnlyFans, you know. So this is very interesting to see have we evolved since that point? You know, so I’m excited about that and look forward to the case.

Jack Stripling There’s some legal ground to test there. So I wanted to bring you on here because it is a hell of a story. You know, you were somebody in university leadership who made this content and then obviously a great scandal ensued. I am wondering, is there a pornographic movie that could be made about what happened here?

Joe Gow Yeah, I guess there is. You know, and I don’t know whether that will ever happen, but certainly it’s a novel concept, isn’t it?

Jack Stripling Yeah. I’m sure the regents will be pleased with that. Okay. Joe, thank you for coming on. I really appreciate it. You took a lot of questions and answered them, and I’m grateful to you for that. Thank you so much.

Joe Gow My pleasure, Jack. And thank you for asking those great questions.

Jack Stripling College Matters from The Chronicle is a production of The Chronicle of Higher Education, the nation’s leading independent newsroom covering colleges. If you like the show, please leave us a review or invite a friend to listen. And remember to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss an episode. You can find an archive of every episode, all of our show notes, and much more at chronicle.com/collegematters. If you like, drop us a note at collegematters@chronicle.com. We are produced by Rococo Punch. Our podcast artwork is by Catrell Thomas. Special thanks to our colleagues Brock Read, Sarah Brown, Fernanda Zamudio-Suarez, Laura Krantz, Carmen Mendoza, Ron Coddington, Joshua Hatch, and all of the people at The Chronicle who make this show possible. I’m Jack Stripling. Thanks for listening.