Professor Fish Talks to N.Y. Times About Harvard Researcher Charged with Smuggling

Professor Eric Fish spoke to the New York Times for a May 15 story on Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard researcher from Russia who now faces felony smuggling charges.

The charges came three months after Petrova was detained in Boston for failing to declare frog embryos she attempted to bring into the country at the request of her Harvard supervisor. She has been fighting deportation ever since.

Petrova is being charged under a statute that targets individuals who willfully mislead customs agents about items they are bringing into the United States. Fish told the Times that the charge usually is brought against for-profit operations, and that he knows of no other case of an academic being charged.

Professor Fish’s primary research is in criminal law, with particular focus on the ethical duties of participants in the criminal process, the structure of immigration crimes, and the system’s emphasis on administrative efficiency. Fish has served as a public defender, first with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, and later as a Federal Defender in San Diego.