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.
ScAmerica: How We Got the President Trump We Deserved
The New York Times recently had a good round-up of podcasts covering American scams, businesses built on deceiving people — a category in the U.S. that accounts for billions in annual profits, and millions of victims. I’ve been listening to these series about pyramid schemes and other cons, and they are both fascinating and disturbing.
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DeVos Seeks Emergency Order to Avoid Deposition by Defrauded Students
Seeking to avoid being questioned under oath by lawyers for defrauded for-profit college students, Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos has filed an unusual emergency petition with a federal appeals court. On Thursday, DeVos’s lawyer, former top Trump administration lawyer Jesse Panuccio, now with the Ft. Lauderdale office of famed litigator David Boies’s law firm, filed
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Burr Uses Nominee Hearing To Repeat Phony Stock Trading Charge
At this morning’s confirmation hearing for Biden nominee James Kvaal to be Under Secretary of Education, Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), the ranking Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, renewed false, thoroughly debunked charges that Obama administration officials engaged in improper collusion with Wall Street short sellers who were betting against companies
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Convicted Felon Martha Stewart to Keynote Convention Involving Predatory For-Profit Colleges
CECU, the trade association of for-profit colleges, announced to its members today that lifestyle entrepreneur Martha Stewart will be the keynote speaker for its annual conference, to be held in person in Grapevine, Texas, in June. Stewart, the omnipresent author and television host, recently hailed in Fortune as American’s first female self-made billionaire, was convicted
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To Curb Scam Colleges, Cardona Must Open Education Department Books
Earlier this month, 15 national organizations, including the American Federation of Teachers, Center for American Progress, and the National Consumer Law Center, plus me, sent a letter to the new U.S. Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, urging the education department to move promptly to provide the public with much better access to critical information about
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Ex-Democratic Congressman Joins Board of For-Profit College That Preys On Low-Income Students
Perdoceo Education Corp., operator of for-profit colleges that have repeatedly faced law enforcement actions for deceiving and abusing low-income students, announced today that Alan Wheat, a former Democratic congressman representing Missouri, has joined the company’s board of directors. Wheat, a senior policy advisor in the DC office of the law firm Polsinelli, will receive $80,000
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Independence University Operator Seeks To Conceal Record of Trial It Lost
The Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which runs online Independence University, CollegeAmerica, and other schools, received a devastating $3 million judgment last summer from a Colorado judge who presided over the trial of a case brought by the state’s attorney general. Now, while CEHE appeals that decision and seeks to fend off an
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It’s Time for the Education Department to Dismiss Accreditor ACICS
Today the Department of Education’s advisory committee on higher education, NACIQI, is considering for the second time in five years whether the Department should eliminate the accrediting body ACICS as a gatekeeper for colleges’ access to federal student grants and loans. It was a dramatic development in 2016 when the same committee — consisting of
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