American legal scholar and art crime investigator
Apsara Iyer is an American art crime investigator and the 137th president of the "Harvard Law Review". She is the first Indian American woman to be elected to that position.
Early life and education.
Iyer was born in Chicago and raised in West Lafayette, Indiana. She attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, and then Yale University, where she received a bachelor's in Spanish and in economics and math. In 2012, she was a finalist for a Rhodes Scholarship. She was awarded the Clarendon Fund scholarship to pursue graduate studies at University of Oxford, where she received an MPhil in economics.
Career.
Work to counter antiquities trafficking and art crime.
In 2018, Iyer joined the Antiquities Trafficking Unit within the New York County District Attorney's office, working with Matthew Bogdanos on major cases related to art and crime, the illicit antiquities trade, and looted art. She has been instrumental in the return of numerous looted, stolen, and trafficked cultural objects to their countries of origin. She has been involved in the repatriation of cultural property to 15 different countries, amounting to the return of over 1,100 stolen cultural objects.
In 2021, Iyer spent a summer working with Donna Yates at Maastricht University, researching the application of statutes of limitations in cultural property cases as a Chayes International Public Service Fellow.
Prior to this, she was a volunteer researcher in the Trafficking Culture research consortium and at the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Cultural Heritage Center.
"Harvard Law Review" Palestinian genocide article controversy.
Amidst the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, two editors of the "Harvard Law Review" solicited an article by Harvard PhD candidate and human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, which "argue[d] that the atrocities in Gaza amount to genocide" and that "the distinctive nature of the domination Palestinians have faced should demand a new category of crime: 'Nakba'." After the article was edited, fact-checked, and initially approved, Iyer intervened to stop its publication, citing safety concerns. After this, an emergency meeting of 100 editors of the "Harvard Law Review" was called and an anonymous vote was held, in which 63% of editors voted against publication. This move generated public controversy among editors and others.
Personal life.
Iyer speaks English, Hindi, and Tamil.
References.
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