About: David Halperin
Twitter: @DaHalperin
Bio: David Halperin is the co-founder and editor of Republic Report. Halperin, a self-employed lawyer based in Washington DC, engages in public advocacy, investigative work, and legal representation on a wide range of issues, including higher education, climate change, democracy, corruption, open government, and national security. He also advises organizations and companies on strategy, policy, communications, and legal matters. He is of counsel to Public.Resource.org, a non-profit focused on making legal and government materials available for free to the public.
Halperin’s investigative and advocacy work on predatory for-profit colleges since 2010 has spurred reforms in policy and regulations, triggered law enforcement investigations, and led to the closure of numerous deceptive schools.
Halperin was from 2004 until 2012 the founding director of Campus Progress and senior vice president at the Center for American Progress. Before that, he was: senior policy advisor for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign; founding executive director of the American Constitution Society; White House speechwriter and special assistant for national security affairs to President Clinton; co-founder of the Internet company Progressive Networks (now called RealNetworks); counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee; law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell (D.D.C.); research assistant to Robert S. McNamara; and research analyst at the Arms Control Association.
Halperin has represented clients in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state and federal courts. Among many other efforts, Halperin helped represent Greenpeace in an unprecedented 2004 Miami criminal jury trial over protest activity, resulting in a directed verdict of acquittal; aided climate groups facing investigation by the House Science Committee during 2015-16; and represented Public Resource in landmark copyright litigation from 2012 to 2024 over efforts to make federal regulations publicly available online without charge.
Halperin writes at Republic Report, and his articles also have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, The Nation, Politico, Slate, Foreign Policy, and other outlets. In recent years he has testified before the House Oversight Committee and at several federal agencies, and he has spoken at major conferences and events across the country. Halperin has served since 2007 on the board of directors of Public Citizen.
Halperin graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.
Data Shows U.S. Aid to Perdoceo Schools Hurts Students and Taxpayers
New data released by the U.S. Department of Education show that the two schools operated by for-profit Perdoceo Education Corp. — American Intercontinental University (AIU) and Colorado Technical University (CTU), both entirely online — continue to deliver poor results for students, with low graduation rates and graduate incomes and high levels of student debt. Coming
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Arkansas Trustees Reject University of Phoenix Purchase
This afternoon, at the end of a 40 minute Zoom meeting, the board of trustees of the University of Arkansas System voted 5-4 to reject a resolution that would have endorsed a plan by the System president, Donald Bobbitt, to have a non-profit organization associated with the school purchase the for-profit University of Phoenix. Bobbitt
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U of Arkansas-U of Phoenix Deal Is Built on a House of Cards
The University of Arkansas System Board of Trustees is meeting Monday to vote on a proposed deal under which a non-profit entity associated with the system would acquire the for-profit University of Phoenix. Skip Rutherford, the former Dean of the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, said Sunday that this hotly-contested decision shouldn’t
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Predatory Abuses Continue At Keiser University
Arthur Keiser, a Florida college operator who has received hundreds of millions in income from your tax dollars, has been aggressively litigating in the federal courts, including now at the U.S. Supreme Court, to prevent the federal government from implementing a settlement agreement that cancels the federal loans of former students of his schools who
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Education Department Will Terminate Aid to Florida Career College
The U.S. Department of Education announced today it will stop providing federal student grant and loan payments to Florida Career College (FCC), a for-profit school whose predatory practices Republic Report helped expose in a May 2020 investigation. The Department explained on its website that it was acting against the school after an investigation “found that
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Trump Is The Biggest Election Cheater in U.S. History
No one has made more frequent and extravagant claims that there has been U.S. election fraud than Donald J. Trump. Among other charges over the past fifteen years, Trump falsely claimed: that Barack Obama may have been wrongly elected president in 2008 because he possibly concealed that he was not born in the United States;
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Tucker Carlson’s Daily Caller Had Pay-to-Play Education Beat
Semafor has obtained a document showing that the Tucker Carlson-founded conservative outlet Daily Caller has provided donors the opportunity to “propose topics for coverage” and establish news beats for reporters in exchange for financial contributions. The memo seems to confirm, as we have long suspected, that the Daily Caller had a pay-to-play beat aimed at
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For-Profit College Operators Will Pay $28 Million After Students Were Locked Out
Education Corporation of America (ECA), a collapsed for-profit college operation that once ran several chains of career schools spread across 70 campuses, has agreed to pay $28 million to settle claims that it shut down its campuses abruptly, without a teach-out plan that would give students fair opportunities to continue their studies elsewhere. The case
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