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.
Rep. Scott Demands Halt to For-Profit College Conversions to Non-Profit
Pushing forward with oversight of controversial conversions of for-profit colleges to non-profits, House Education and Labor Committee chair Bobby Scott (D-VA) has written to Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, calling on the Department of Education and the Internal Revenue Service to “take steps to reform their processes and halt the approval of all conversions until
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Zovio Adds Board Members As Deceptions At Arizona Global Campus Persist
————————– Zovio, the long-time corporate operator of for-profit, online Ashford University, which has repeatedly faced law enforcement actions for deceiving and abusing low-income students, has added two members to its board of directors: John S. Wilson, the former president of Morehouse College, and Ron Huberman, the ex-superintendent of Chicago’s public schools. Zovio recently made a
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Accountability for CEHE College Chain Is Long Overdue
Late last week, as we were the first to report, college overseer ACCSC terminated the accreditation of online career college Independence University, the main school now operated by the non-profit Center for Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), and the U.S. Department of Education suspended from federal contracting Eric Juhlin, CEHE’s CEO. These were positive developments,
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Breaking: Citing Performance Failures, Accreditor Dumps Independence University
After years of warnings, college accreditor ACCSC Thursday finally withdrew accreditation from the career college operation Center For Excellence in Higher Education (CEHE), which operates Independence University and other schools. In a letter dated April 22, ACCSC informed CEHE’s CEO, Eric Juhlin, that Independence University, the only CEHE school not in the process of closing,
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Falsehood-Filled Website On For-Profit Colleges Shuts Down
Around March 31, a non-profit organization called Consumer Action for a Strong Economy (CASE), which has regularly attacked regulators and opponents of controversial corporations, posted a website making false attacks on critics, including me, of predatory for-profit colleges. The website’s phony claims centered on a false and long-ago-debunked charge that Obama administration officials and advocates
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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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