Apsara A Iyer, who is presently a second-year law student at Harvard Law School, was elected as the 137th president of Harvard Law Review, becoming the first Indian American woman to make it to the coveted position.
Incidentally, the Law Review was started in 1887 and is among the oldest and most widely circulated student-run legal scholarship publications. The Law Review has had a history of having presidents who went on to become prominent public figures, and that includes former US President Barack Obama, who served as the 104th leader.
Apsara’s predecessor Priscila E Coronado was all praise for the law student, who she described as intelligent, thoughtful, warm, and one who believed in fierce advocacy of her beliefs. Apsara grew up in Indiana and attended Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusets. She graduated from Yale in 2016 with a bachelor’s degree in Economics, Math, and Spanish.
The law student shares that her main interest lies in the relationship between communities living around archaeological sites and the management of cultural heritage. Her interest led her to work in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Antiquities Trafficking Unit, which tracks stolen works of art and artifacts.
But it was no cakewalk for Apsara Iyer to become the president. She had to go through a rigorous competitive process called ‘write-on’ where HLS students fact-check a document and provide commentary on a recent state or Supreme Court case.
