Overview

• Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove III initiated a controversial investigation into Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) following a February protest at Barnard College.
• Prosecutors in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division refused Bove's directive to compile a membership list of CUAD, citing potential First Amendment violations.
• Efforts to secure a search warrant for CUAD's nonpublic Instagram data were twice denied by a federal magistrate judge, who found the alleged threat insufficient to meet legal standards.
• Meta suspended CUAD's Instagram account in late March for violating community standards, further complicating the investigation.
• The probe has effectively stalled, with internal DOJ discord, an exodus of civil rights lawyers, and concerns about the investigation being a pretext for intimidation and deportation of student activists.