Each year, my school, the University of Arkansas-Little Rock William H. Bowen School of Law, welcomes new students in a ceremony most recently conducted by Arkansas Supreme Court Justice Rhonda Wood and my school's dean, Colin Crawford. They both delivered sound advice.

Wood's fitting caution: Students' actions in law school will echo long after, shaping their reputations in the legal community. Crawford complemented this with: Students better clean up their social media before embarking on job searches. Little did we know how nearly prescient they would be shortly later.

Two weeks ago, my column relayed a Facebook comment of a retired dean emeritus from my school that read: "I believe that the things that [recently murdered commentator Charlie Kirk] said and the policies he supported harmed people. You may believe that attacking trans people and limiting their rights or attacking immigrants and urging their mass deportation or supporting the genocide in Gaza or setting up a website to harass liberal academics and attempt to get them fired isn't harming anyone. Fair enough." This statement equated verbal advocacy and policy positions with tangible harm--rhetoric that risks causing some to justify real-world violence in response.

At the same time, a recently hired professor at my school wrote on Facebook after Kirk's murder: "When a good person dies, a despicable evil person should also die." She then equated Kirk mourners with members of the Ku Klux Klan. These statements go even further in justifying violence by demonizing Kirk supporters and calling for someone to die. The professor was immediately suspended pending an investigation.

A deeper dive into the........

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