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.
Scott Rejects Hearing From DeVos Subordinate; Demands She Testify
In a letter sent this evening, House Education and Labor Committee chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) rejected the Department of Education’s proposal that it send for a hearing a Department official in place of Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Scott had requested that DeVos testify regarding the Department’s utter failure to halt the collection of debts
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Students’ Lawyer: DeVos Dept. Double-Crossed Me To Aid Scam Colleges
Robyn Smith, a lawyer associated with the National Consumer Law Center and the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, was selected by the U.S. Department of Education to represent students in negotiations earlier this year on a basket of new Department regulations affecting college accreditation, online education, and other matters. The Department heavily stacked the
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Breaking: Judge Holds DeVos in Contempt For Pressing Students To Make Bogus Loan Payments
U.S. Magistrate Judge Sallie Kim today issued an order holding Secretary Betsy DeVos and the Department of Education in contempt of court and fined them $100,000 for violating her order that they stop trying to collect on loans from former students of for-profit Corinthian Colleges schools. The Department, during the Obama administration, determined that the
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House Chairman Threatens to Subpoena DeVos Over Dream Center Debacle
House Education and Labor Committee chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA) is threatening to subpoena Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, citing her Department’s failure to provide documents responsive to the Committee’s probe of the collapse of Dream Center Education Holdings. DCEH was a non-profit entity that acquired and, for about a year until it shut down,
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Ukraine Scandal’s Gordon Sondland Invested in Predatory College Loans
American Banker has examined investments held by Gordon Sondland, the hotelier who parlayed donations to the GOP into a post as U.S. ambassador to the European Union and apparently sought to implement President Trump’s disgraceful effort to pressure Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden. The publication found that, in addition to operating luxury hotels, Sondland
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Bill in Congress Would End Taxpayer Aid to For-Profit Colleges. Good.
Today Representative Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced a bill that would bar the Department of Education from sending federal student grants and loans to for-profit colleges. I support this legislation, at the very least for its value as a wake up call to a bad-behaving industry and its paid cheerleaders in
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Our Country Needs To Wake Up
Our country needs to wake up. We have a president who is extraordinarily corrupt, dishonest, incompetent, unbalanced, immature, vindictive, racist, misogynist, and who acts with utter contempt for the law and utter disregard for our security. It’s time for everyone, every day, to say this person is not capable of serving as president. Today, the
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She’s Not Going To Jail, But DeVos Needs To Act On Predatory College Collapses
While a federal judge pondered throwing the book at Betsy DeVos for abusing ex-students of a shuttered predatory for-profit college chain, DeVos’s Department of Education seemed to finally take a small step to protect students and taxpayers from the possible collapse of another of these institutions. Monday morning in federal court in San Francisco, U.S.
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