Sponsors & Partners

About the sponsors

"Protecting Cultural Heritage: International Law after the War in Iraq" is made possible through the generous support of:

We also gratefully acknowledge those who provided in-kind and other support of this program:

About the organizers

The Cultural Policy Center at The University of Chicago

The Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago is an interdisciplinary research center and nationally recognized leader in the emerging field of cultural policy research and education. Founded in 1999 as a joint initiative of the Harris School of Public Policy Studies and the Division of Humanities, its mission is to provide research and inform policy that affects the arts, humanities and cultural heritage.

"Protecting Cultural Heritage: International Law after the War in Iraq" continues the Center's long-standing commitment to fostering rigorous, transdisciplinary and timely scholarship and informed debate on significant cultural issues with immediate policy implications.  Previous major conferences include  "Taking Funds, Giving Offense, Making Money: The Brooklyn Museum of Art Controversy and the Dilemmas of Arts Policy"; "Building on the Past: Landmarks Policy and Urban Development"; "Playing by the Rules: The Cultural Policy Challenges of Video Games"; and "The Future of Public Television."

By convening academic experts and policy professionals to address the assault upon the world's cultural heritage, the Cultural Policy Center again seeks to identify solutions to pressing problems in the cultural sector.

The Oriental Institute

Scholars at The Oriental Institute have been responsible for some of the most important archaeological surveys and regional studies undertaken in Iraq to date.

The University of Chicago's archaeological involvement in Iraq began in 1903, when two seasons of excavations were undertaken at the site of Bismaya (ancient Adab). Systematic work in long-term planning began in the 1920s as the Oriental Institute Iraq Expedition established excavations at the site of Khorsabad (ancient Dur-Sharrukin), the capital of the Assyrian king Sargon II. Subsequent excavations in the Diyala Region (1930-1936), during which four sites in the area northeast of Baghdad were comprehensively and systematically excavated, helped to establish much of early Mesopotamia's early chronology. 

Since 1948, the Institute has worked at the site of Nippur, the holy city of the Sumerians, and continued until Gulf War of 1991. Its commitment to archaeology in Iraq continued even after the United Nations imposed an economic embargo on Iraq that halted archaeological work by foreigners. In 1994, the Institute launched the Diyala Project, publishing online all archaeological data from its most extensive project in Iraq. Satellite photography and remote sensing became another major focus for Oriental Institute research, encompassing published studies on site distribution and ancient river channels.

In 2002, impending war on Iraq and the resulting threat to its archaeological heritage led McGuire Gibson, Professor for Mesopotamian Archaeology at the Oriental Institute, to work with students to compile a list of 4,000 of Iraq's most important archaeological sites, monuments, and museums.  The list was provided to the military on January 25, 2003, with the sole intention to avoid damage to these sites during combat.

Following the war, the fall of Baghdad, and the looting of the Iraq Museum in April 2003, scholars at the Oriental Institute formed an "Iraq Working Group" to coordinate needed actions on behalf of Iraq's sites and antiquities.  One week after the looting of the Iraq Museum between April 9 and 11, 2003, The Oriental Institute launched its Iraq Museum Database Project and online clearinghouse to document the losses of artifacts from the museum and aid in their recovery.

The Institute's excavations since the 1920s at some of Iraq's most important sites, had resulted in the recovery of thousands of objects housed between the Iraq Museum and the Oriental Institute; because all of these objects were catalogued during excavation and most photographed and/or drawn in the field, the Oriental Institute has visual and descriptive records of almost 20,000 objects that were housed in the Iraq Museum.

"Lost Treasures of Iraq," the online clearinghouse for information relating to Iraq's cultural heritage, draws upon the Institute's records to catalogue objects from the Iraq Museum confirmed or feared to have been stolen, or whose status is unknown. Scholars and publishers from around the world have contributed material, both published and unpublished, to augment the database. The Lost Treasures site also housed IraqCrisis, a moderated list that communicates information on cultural property damaged, destroyed or lost from Iraq's museums and libraries.

The University of Chicago Law School

The University of Chicago Law School is an integral part of the world-class intellectual community of the University of Chicago. Students from diverse backgrounds study with leading scholars and teachers trained to think independently, critically and creatively about the law.

The Law School has always been home to innovative scholarship. The faculty is, by a wide margin, the most productive, widely cited, and influential law faculty in the United States -- and perhaps the world. Because the Law School believes in interdisciplinary inquiry, members of our faculty do not limit themselves to the study of legal doctrine. They are also economists, historians and philosophers. They include a former U.S. Secretary of State, a U.S. Senator, several judges and numerous practicing lawyers.

The Law School has played a pivotal role in many innovations in legal
education made over the last century, including developing the field of law and economics, the recognition of administrative and comparative law as fields of study, and broadening curriculum to include greater empirical and clinical study.