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.
College Head Arthur Keiser Settles Lawsuit With Mother, Who Claimed Fraud and Theft
Arthur Keiser, the politically powerful operator of several chains of career colleges in Florida and the Southeast, has settled a lawsuit brought against him by his 98-year-old mother, Evelyn Keiser, in which she charged him with fraud and theft, alleging that her son cheated her out of income generated by businesses they have owned together.
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Scam Over? Zovio/UAGC In Tailspin
Ashford University and its parent entity Zovio comprise a for-profit education operation that the chairman of a Senate committee branded “an absolute scam” during a 2011 investigative hearing highlighting the company’s deceptive advertising, predatory recruiting, high prices, and weak educational offerings. More than a decade later, after tens of thousands more students have used billions
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Calls Mount in Congress for Federal Probe of Keiser University
Senior leaders in the U.S. Congress, including the chairs of the House Veterans Affairs, House Education and Labor, and Senate Judiciary committees, have now called on the Department of Education to investigate Florida’s Keiser University and its controversial conversion from for-profit to non-profit — a deal that has continued to enrich the school’s politically powerful
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Former For-Profit College Recruiter: Industry’s Mantra Masks Predatory Abuses
Below is a statement sent to me late last week by Aidan Peters, who worked as an admissions representative from 2016 to 2020 for Colorado Technical University (CTU), a large online school owned by Illinois-based Perdoceo, one of the biggest companies in the for-profit college industry. In recent years, Perdoceo has settled major law enforcement
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McDonald’s Steers Employees To Troubled For-Profit College
Since 2014, McDonald’s and Colorado Technical University have had a partnership that involves the hamburger giant steering its employees to the online school, where they can pursue degrees in fields ranging from business to health care to information technology. The web page of McDonald’s Archways to Opportunities program announces “100% TUITION COVERED” at CTU, and
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Verdict Against Zovio Adds to Peril for Arizona Global Campus
A California court’s $22.4 million judgment last week against for-profit college operation Zovio, for years of deceptions against students at its Ashford University, creates more peril for the University of Arizona, which bought the online school from Zovio in 2020 and renamed it University of Arizona Global Campus (UAGC). Following a trial where the California
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Grade Accreditors on Their Handling of College Abuses
Below are comments I presented at today’s meeting of NACIQI, the Department of Education’s advisory committee on educational quality. Thanks for the work you’re doing here. At last summer’s meeting you debated how much you should be looking at the conduct of particular schools in your evaluation of accreditors. When the Department approves an accreditor,
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Arizona Nursing Board Accuses For-Profit Aspen University of “Unprofessional Conduct”
The Arizona State Board of Nursing on Friday charged for-profit Aspen University with “unprofessional conduct,” a development that leaves the school’s some 700 Arizona-based nursing students with uncertain futures. In a 15-page complaint, the board cited evidence, based on student complaints and its own investigation, of low nursing license exam scores, rapid admissions growth, decrease
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