BATON ROUGE -- Board Members at Southern University Law Center held a hearing Friday to decide if Professor Kelly Carmena can keep her job. However, Southern says that a decision on that was not made at that hearing.

The university suspended Carmena in September following a controversial post she allegedly made regarding the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk.

The post allegedly stated that Carmena would "1,000% wish death on people like him (Kirk)," and that he is the "epitome of evil" following the 31-year-old being killed at an event in Utah.

When the hearing began, the board reiterated that it was a closed hearing and asked everyone not involved with the hearing to leave the building.

Since her suspension, questions have been raised about whether what Carmena posted would be considered a threat in legal terms. WBRZ spoke to one Baton Rouge legal expert about this.

"I think you'd be hard pressed to believe that her wishing the death on someone who's already dead is a quote on quote threat. Is it insightful or inciting violence? I don't know that it does that either, and these are important because if it incites violence or it's a threat, then it's not protected speech," Attorney and legal expert Franz Borghardt said.

Southern said that Carmena is a tenured professor with the university. Borghardt says this does not give her absolute immunity from being terminated. However, he added that it does give Carmena a layer of shielding, which comes in the form of due process rights.

Considering that Southern University is a public entity, it adds another unique layer.

"Now, if it's a public entity, if it's a government job, well then we have to do the free speech analysis, and we've seen not only in this state, but nationally, teachers and individuals who are in public jobs getting fired because they post something stupid on social media. Offensive comments on social media sometimes are protected by the First Amendment, and if they're protected by the First Amendment, then that public entity cannot fire you," Borghardt said.

However, Borghardt says that even with the constitutional right, consequences do come with it, and defending those rights may cost someone a lot of time, energy, and stress that might make it not worth pursuing.

"Southern has a right, the counter argument is that Southern has a right to say, hey, you know we want a certain caliber of professors that are not going to post on social media like that, and it's not First Amendment, it's a level of professionalism for us," Borghardt said.