President Gene R. Nichol is back in the hot seat after reluctantly agreeing to allow the Sex Workers’ Art Show to appear at the College of William and Mary next week, the Newport News, Va., Daily Press reported.

The show, which is billed as “an eye-popping evening of visual and performance art” by strippers, prostitutes, and other sex-industry workers, is scheduled to visit more than a dozen college campuses this winter. Mr. Nichol had asked the students who are sponsoring Monday’s event at the Williamsburg, Va., institution to find an off-campus venue for it, but he eventually agreed that the show must go on, citing the First Amendment and the spirit of academic freedom.

“My views and the views of others in the community about the worth or offensiveness of the program can provide no basis for censoring it,” Mr. Nichol said in a written statement. “Censorship has no place at a great university.”

Mr. Nichol ignited a controversy in 2006 when he ordered a brass cross removed from the college chapel in an effort to make students of other faiths feel more welcome there. The cross was subsequently returned to the chapel. —Don Troop