The president of the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse was fired because of porn videos he made with his wife. A decision that the couple does not accept: shielding themselves behind the First Amendment of the constitution, Joe Gow and Carmen Wilson criticize the university’s choice, calling it a senseless “punishment” given that the videos depicted a married couple and did not incite violence or exploitation.
The board of universities in Wisconsin unanimously decided to remove Gow, rector since 2007. “We are alarmed and disgusted by his actions,” the board said in a statement without explicitly mentioning the videos. However, many students expressed their solidarity with Gow online and on campus, considered one of the best presidents and professors at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “He was a private citizen when he made the videos, I don’t like that he was punished,” explained one student, describing Gow as very popular in the college. «He was available to everyone. He went around campus with his skateboard and greeted everyone”, she said again. “Being fired for something as silly as porn is ridiculous,” added a former student of the university. In the videos posted on their YouTube channel @SexyHappyCouple, the rector and his wife never mentioned their relationship with University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, and for more explicit content they always referred to their accounts on OnlyFans and PornHub.
“We have this show called ‘Sexy healthy Cooking’ in which, while cooking, we interview” other actors in the porn industry, trying to give them a “human face that they otherwise wouldn’t have with their work”, Gow explained to New York Times. With the dismissal, the university «does not follow its policies on academic freedom and freedom of expression. They don’t seem to understand that the First Amendment will be crucial in this situation,” she added. In the conservative media, the Gow case fuels the debate about American universities having become too liberal. What happened at the University of Wisconsin is in fact compared to the scandals at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard, overwhelmed by criticism for anti-Semitism on campuses with the war in Gaza. The three cases do not seem linked but instead have in common “the important task of educating young people”, they are three characterized by a “clear lack of morality” and they are – attacks the editorial board of the New York Post – the “three faces of the same narcissistic nihilism.”