{"id":17842,"date":"2023-02-18T02:15:05","date_gmt":"2023-02-18T02:15:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/?p=17842"},"modified":"2023-02-18T02:18:06","modified_gmt":"2023-02-18T02:18:06","slug":"apsara-iyer-becomes-the-first-indian-woman-president-of-harvard-law-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/?p=17842","title":{"rendered":"Apsara Iyer becomes the first Indian woman president of Harvard Law Review"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Apsara Iyer, first Indian woman president of the prestigious student publication, tells us why restoration of stolen antiques to their rightful countries is her mission<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In February, first generation Indian-American Apsara Iyer claimed another milestone for the\u00a0Indian<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>community already standing on an Everest of spelling bee wins, and so many more exemplary academic achievements\u2014she became the first Indian woman to be appointed president of the prestigious Harvard Law Review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The journal is published by an independent student group at Harvard Law School, and is said to stand first among 143 student law journals for its impact factor. It is among the oldest student-run legal scholarship publications. Iyer is the first Indian woman in its 136-year history to hold the position, and follows such prestigious names as former US president Barack Obama and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Pudhil station, White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iyer grew up in Indiana, born \u00a0to Tamil parents raised in\u00a0Wadala<\/strong><\/a>; the couple\u2019s parents had moved to India\u2019s financial capital in the 1930s and \u201940s from Kerala. The 29-year-old joined the prestigious law school after four-and-a-half-years at the Antiquities Trafficking Unit in the Manhattan District Attorney\u2019s Office, where she helped restore over 1,100 antiquities to 15 different countries. \u201cSeveral of these objects were from India,\u201d she says over e-mail, \u201cand I was the lead analyst on many investigations concerning trafficking networks operating in India and Southeast Asia.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iyer\u2019s interest in history and antiquities was seeded in high school, when she worked on an archaeological excavation site in Peru. \u201cI began to pursue my studies at Yale with a research focus on the value of cultural heritage,\u201d she says. \u201cDuring one of my field research projects in India, I had the opportunity to visit a site that had been the victim of looting. I distinctly remember that while I was at the site, someone asked me, \u2018What are you going to do about this?\u2019 This wake-up call led me to work in law to address the issue of antiquities trafficking.\u201d Iyer graduated from Yale majoring in Math, Economics and Spanish, and went on to pursue an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The destruction of cultural\u00a0heritage\u00a0<\/strong><\/a>and its effect on people occupied her mind. \u201cThis kind of destruction\u2014by looting or other means\u2014is an attack on the identity of a community and, in turn, our common humanity. Cultural heritage represents a shared history, roots, and beliefs.\u201d Her favourite memories from working at the District Attorney\u2019s Office surround organising repatriation ceremonies to return stolen objects to their lawful owners. \u201cEach repatriation ceremony, whether with India or Iraq or Greece, is incredibly moving,\u201d she says. \u201cAlthough the return of the objects will not recover their original archaeological context, the repatriation allows for a piece of history to journey back to its lawful owner.\u201d One case of satisfying avengement must have been that of hedge fund billionaire and philanthropist Michael Steinhardt. In 2021, he surrendered $70 million of stolen antiquities and was banned for a lifetime on acquiring antiquities. Iyer worked on the case in which 180 antiquities, stolen from 11 countries, were returned to rightful owners in Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Jordan,\u00a0Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Turkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the first cases she was assigned at the DA\u2019s office was the one involving a Nataraja stolen from the Punnainallur Temple in Thanjavur. \u201cOver the next three years,\u201d she says, \u201cI worked tirelessly with the lead prosecutor to uncover new evidence, witnesses, and investigative leads. Our work single-handedly resulted in the return of the Nataraja to the Government of India. In such cases, I have seen first-hand how the communities maintained hope and prayed for years that the relics will return.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another inspiring moment was being able to work on a case involving a mother goddess statue stolen from a site in Udaipur that she had visited in 2013 for research as a student at Yale.\u201cI photographed the temple post-theft,\u201d she says, \u201cand met with local witnesses who still remembered the statues. Finally, in 2022 nine years later, we were able to recover one idol and it is awaiting repatriation to India.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the personal front, Iyer enjoys looking at art and boxing, a sport she trained in for a charity event while living in New York.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

mid-day.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apsara Iyer, first Indian woman president of the prestigious student publication, tells us why restoration of stolen antiques to their rightful countries is her mission. In February, first generation Indian-American Apsara Iyer claimed another milestone for the\u00a0Indian\u00a0community already standing on an Everest of spelling bee wins, and so many more exemplary academic achievements\u2014she became the … Continue reading Apsara Iyer becomes the first Indian woman president of Harvard Law Review<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17842"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17849,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17842\/revisions\/17849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.globalrecordsindia.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}