THOSE WERE THE GOOD OLD DAYS.

Seven years ago, Northern Illinois president Doug Baker first lost the confidence of the faculty, followed by the student newspaper, ultimately the city newspaper concurred, then the state's inspector general started looking inside those little tin boxes, and then he resigned.  In proper Nixonian fashion, he did so to spare the university any "distraction" and blamed his predecessors for creating a culture of corruption.

More recently, the big higher education story has been the resignation of Harvard's box-checking Claudine Gay, who also took the Nixonian way out, although in so doing she's brought a lot of attention to careless scholarly writing and perhaps to faction fighting among Harvard's Curia, er, governing boards.

Perhaps the most amusing resignation of a high university official as the fall semester wound down, though, involves LaCrosse State, oh, sorry, Wisconsin at LaCrosse chancellor Joe Gow, who supplemented his income the same way a candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates raised campaign cash.

As Dave Barry puts it, you can't make this stuff up.

University of Wisconsin–La Crosse chancellor Joe Gow was fired Wednesday for appearing with his wife in pornographic content on at least two websites, The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.

A statement from the UW system Board of Regents noted that the decision to fire Gow as chancellor was unanimous but did not address his appearance in the videos, referring to the matter only in vague terms.

“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,” UW system president Jay Rothman said in the statement. “His actions were abhorrent.”

With the Packers' playoffs aspirations still contingent between Christmas and New Year's Day, the fourth estate had to cover something.  Let's make outside funding fun again, even for the older set.

Gow, 63, and his wife, Carmen Wilson, appear in videos on several porn websites using "Sexy Happy Couple" as the account name, a moniker also used on at least two social media accounts.

The couple also published two books under pseudonyms detailing their experiences in the adult film industry. Both books and the social media accounts feature photos clearly showing Gow and Wilson.

The episode provided a little pre-Grand Tour amusement for Margaret "University Diaries" Soltan.

This would be the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin La Crosse, assiduous producer/performer in hardcore porn films.

For his official bio, read this while you can. Unofficially, the handsome rangy runner/vegan has two books about how great it is to film yourself fucking but how it all has to be on the down-low because he holds a high-profile job.

Hélas, someone (I guess a few other people in La Crosse watch porn videos) recognized him and told on him and now he’s been fired but he’s not going quietly but rather has much to say about his free speech rights.

We'll get to his efforts as an administrator in time, as well as to these free speech considerations, but let us note first that there were no avant-garde special pleaders on the LaCrosse faculty to contextualize his, um, transgressivity as praxis of High Theory.

Gow told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel the creation of books and videos exploring consensual adult sexuality falls within his right to free speech under the First Amendment. He said he previously hid this part of his life but made a recent decision to reverse course and "be a little bit more open about these free speech issues."

"There's nothing said about the University of Wisconsin; there's nothing said about the chancellor (on the videos)," he said after his firing. "So someone else would have to make those associations. And then someone would have to say those are problematic."

No university property or funds were used to create the books or videos, Gow said. He created the content on his own personal time and spent more on production costs than the "minimal" money the videos have earned through the websites.

It's beyond parody, isn't it?

“You see, we couldn’t be more entrenched in the local establishment,” they wrote in “Monogamy with Benefits: How Porn Enriches Our Relationship,” published in 2015. “Not only do we serve as executives at two of the better-known organizations in the city where we live, but we are also highly active in charitable and civic activities. We hold seats on non-profit boards, and we’re fixtures at a very traditional ‘downtown’ public service club. All this has made us rather visible public figures in our city. We’re sometimes quoted in the newspapers, and people approach us from time to time to say they’ve seen us on last night’s television news. In fact, you can even go on the web and find photographs of us smiling alongside ultra-reputable current and former national and state political leaders.”

The couple noted they were “fairly certain a scandal would ensue if our peers were to know about what we’ve been doing.”

“We think our sex is beautiful and have no qualms at all about other people watching us make love. But our establishment colleagues likely would be shocked to watch us complete the full carnal process – particularly with professional porn stars – and we’re fairly certain we’d be shunned in our community. Our careers likely would be ruined, and what’s worse is that the lives of our families and friends also could be impacted significantly, and not in a positive way. So, as much as we’d like to be as honest with everyone else as we’ve been with ourselves about our sexuality, we feel compelled to keep our unconventional lifestyle hidden.”

That article ends in a provocative way. "In an interview after announcing his intention to retire as chancellor, Gow mentioned his desire to return to the classroom and spend more time cooking with his wife."

The culture war pile-on continues.  The editorial writers at New York's Post link, for perhaps the first time, LaCrosse Normal, er, you know, with the Ivies.  "U.Wisconsin’s porn-loving Joe Gow shows college rot — just like his Harvard and UPenn counterparts."  It's not that maintaining a slush fund, Northern Illinois style, is any different when it comes to setting a bad example, but some bad examples are more egregious than others.  "Gow’s case may seem unconnected to that of ousted UPenn President Liz Magill and (sadly) still employed Harvard head Claudine Gay, but all three were entrusted with the most important task imaginable, the education of the young — and all three proved utterly lacking in moral sense."  Claudine Gay has since been returned to faculty.

Mr Gow and Ms Wilson subsequently sat down with Journal-Sentinel reporter Kelly Meyerhofer for an in-depth interview on the fallout.  She apparently headhunted him for the LaCrosse gig.

Wilson first met Gow at a higher education conference in 2006.

She had been sent to Edgewood College in Madison to scope out potential candidates as chair of the UW-La Crosse chancellor search commitee. Gow and other college president-hopefuls were there to learn about the demands of the job.

Gow sat in the row ahead of Wilson's. She noticed the slightly frayed suit jacket of the man in front of her.

"Now that person is down to earth," she thought. He'd be perfect to lead UW-La Crosse.

Their time at the university overlapped for five years. Wilson shifted from teaching psychology to taking on more administrative roles, including as Gow's chief of staff for a while.

They said it was a strictly professional relationship. He was married at the time. So was she.

It's unfortunate that Mr Gow's, um, hobbies, got in the way of some traits that might be valuable at a hardscrabble converted teachers' college.  Maybe LaCrosse should have stuck to cultivating the high-school social set on the basis of their party scene, or perhaps that is how they held serve on enrollments.

He wore sneakers on move-in day to help haul boxes into dorm rooms. He channeled his rock 'n' roll days at campus concerts.

When finances were tight, Gow cut the university spokesperson position. He didn't see the need for anyone to speak on his behalf.

"It was really fun to do it in a way that felt true to who I am," Gow said of his chancellorship.

Gow left UW-La Crosse among the best financially positioned across the UW System. Enrollment has held steady, which is rare for a regional campus when so many others struggle to fill seats. Gow said the university was the only one within the UW System to avoid furloughs and layoffs when COVID-19 hit. Now, as other UW schools grapple with multimillion dollar deficits, UW-La Crosse stands out for its balanced budget.

Despite the successes, Gow said he often felt like an outsider at academic leadership conferences. Within the UW System, he described a philosophical shift over the past decade toward standardizing and controlling campuses, which he found stifling.

"My feeling has been, let's try to be as honest as we can and open — It's a university," he said. "And then I was viewed as this, you know, kind of like, 'what's he doing?'"

"Honest and open" might have been his philosophy, at least when it came to inviting unofficial colleagues to campus.

Inviting adult film actress Nina Hartley to speak on campus in 2018 led to a swift reprimand for "exercising poor judgment." Previously, he and Wilson had filmed a sex video with Hartley.

"I think that college students want to be somewhere where they have the freedom to explore all kinds of ideas," he said. "Frankly, these websites that we’re on, (students) are on there, too. Shouldn't we be talking about that?"

"All kinds of ideas" ought be including, but not limited to, pay-per view, whether for campaign fundraising or not, but LaCrosse State, like Harvard, MIT, and Penn, are free speech for the right kind of political speech.

As to the amorous couple's Amendment I rights, those might be more readily upheld for faculty, who do not speak for the university, than for administrators.

In short, while the First Amendment may indeed protect Gow’s continued employment as a faculty member with UW, the university will likely cite grounds for terminating his position as chancellor around the terms of his appointment and the high-ranking and public-facing nature of the position.

Here, though, it's not about protected speech, it's about making the university look silly.  But then, doing things that look silly might be one of the hazards of playing around with ideas.

Gow did not link the films to his employment at UW or even to his real name. And, at least in his role as a UW faculty member, he is not speaking on behalf of the university in ways that he might as chancellor, and his ability to satisfy the duties of a faculty member are not undermined by appearing in the films. The alleged reputational damage to the university asserted by UW president Rothman, if there is any considering Gow as a faculty member, arises solely from the university’s own actions publicly linking the adult films to Gow.

The First Amendment restricts state universities from retaliating against faculty members based on the controversial nature of their speech. Where their speech is not obscene or otherwise unprotected, occurs outside of work, is unrelated to their employment, and concerns a matter of public interest, institutions may not punish faculty members for their speech simply because university administrators disapprove of its content.

That principle applies whether the speech concerns veganism or sex. Or, in this case, both.

Where some university administrators disapprove of the content provided by other university administrators, it gets complicated, doesn't it?