Freedom of Expression (Season 23, Episode 1)
Premise: The stabbing of a Jewish university president who would not take sides after October 7 leads to a student activist, and then to the professor accused of handing him the knife.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 23, Episode 1
- Detectives
- Det. Jalen Shaw (Mehcad Brooks), Det. Vincent Riley (Reid Scott)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Nolan Price (Hugh Dancy), ADA Samantha Maroun (Odelya Halevi), DA Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston)
- Guest stars
- Tehmina Sunny as Professor Kendra Nasser, Braxton Fannin as Cam Lawson, Alexa Wisener as Chloe Esper, Jason Babinsky as Professor Phillip Klein, Douglas Sills as Alex Geller
- Ripped from the headlines
- The pressure on the fictional president appears to draw on the 2023 campus turmoil over the Israel–Hamas war and on Harvard president Claudine Gay, who was criticized over her response to the October 7 attack, faced plagiarism allegations and resigned on January 2, 2024.
- Director
- Alex Hall
- Writers
- Story: Dick Wolf; Teleplay: Pamela Wechsler; Story & teleplay: Rick Eid
Summary
The Investigation
“Freedom of Expression” opens with Hudson University president Nathan Alpert, worried that critics are combing his books for plagiarism, stabbed twice in the chest on a Lower Manhattan street while on the phone with his wife, Rachel. A card on the body calls him a traitor. Det. Vincent Riley, Shaw’s new partner and on his first homicide in almost three years, nearly shoots a knife-holding man in a camouflage parka until Shaw talks him down; the man says he pulled the jacket and knife out of the trash, and a lip balm from a German boutique, Paradies, is in the pocket.
A lacrosse coach who argued with Alpert over a hazing inquiry is cleared by video. Phillip Klein, a fired professor under a restraining order, has a bodega receipt for the time of the killing; he says Jewish donors were furious that Alpert, himself Jewish, issued no statement after October 7 and defended a pro-Palestinian student group’s film series. Alex Geller says Alpert had just agreed to ban the group after a student was filmed praising Hamas. Its founder, student and actress Chloe Esper, posts a video calling Alpert a traitor, and when the detectives question her, a faculty member throws them out and Chloe tells her millions of followers the police serve Israel.
Video from the boutique shows a parka-wearing customer, and student Cam Lawson is arrested for murder.
The Trial
Maroun tells the arraignment judge that Lawson toasted Hamas at a screening and killed Alpert over the ban; bail is set at $1 million, and she declines to discuss her family in Lebanon with Price. Chloe admits she drove Lawson to a block from the scene but has a dinner alibi. At a rally for Lawson she shares the stage with history professor Kendra Nasser, and Klein opens fire, mortally wounding Chloe, and is shot dead by police when he refuses to drop his gun.
Chloe’s boyfriend says Nasser radicalized both students and called October 7 justified. Video puts Lawson at her apartment an hour after the murder, and a search finds a knife missing from her kitchen set that matches the weapon. Over objections that Lawson must still pay, Price offers him ten years for his cooperation, and Nasser is arrested. Lawson testifies that she suggested the killing and gave him the knife, though she never ordered it. Nasser denies conspiring but says she was proud of him.
Spoiler, the ending: The jury finds Nasser not guilty. One of Lawson’s parents protests that their son faces ten years while she goes free, and Nasser leaves the courthouse answering reporters with “no comment” as a man shouts at her.
Why it stands out
- Reid Scott debuts as Det. Vincent Riley, taking over the partner slot left by Jeffrey Donovan’s Frank Cosgrove; Donovan’s departure was announced on November 15, 2023, two weeks before filming of the season was due to start.
- The season premiered on January 18, 2024, after the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes held up production and NBC cut the order from 22 episodes to 13.
- Huda Fakhreddine, a University of Pennsylvania professor, said she believed Kendra Nasser, the professor accused in the episode, had been modeled on her.