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.
Outside Monitor Found Abuses in Dream Center College Operation
The lawyer appointed to monitor the compliance of big for-profit college company EDMC with a 2015 settlement of consumer fraud charges pursued by 39 state attorneys general found a series of abuses by the operation after it had been taken over last year by a new non-profit, Dream Center Education Holdings. In his third
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Clash Over Ashford Univ. Casts Doubt On VA Protection of Students
The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is charged by law and principle with shielding veterans from predatory abuses — deceptive recruiting, high prices, low-quality programs — by colleges seeking to profit off the GI Bill, which helps veterans pay for higher education. But as the Trump administration, especially the Betsy DeVos Department of Education, has
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DeVos-Backed Deal Would Allow Secretive Non-Profit to Enrich Related For-Profit
The mysterious non-profit foundation that has, with the blessing of Betsy DeVos’s Department of Education, just acquired many of the former EDMC career education schools, is tied to the for-profit company that is slated to provide contract services to those same taxpayer-supported schools; both, Republic Report has learned, are connected to a Wall Street investment
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DeVos Department Bars State Attorneys General From Key Panel
The Betsy DeVos Department of Education acted Wednesday morning to block a representative of state attorneys general from serving on a panel charged with negotiating wide-ranging new rules governing higher education. Although consumer advocates have shown that the new regulations would create opportunities for bad actors to engage in more waste, fraud, and abuse at
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Brent Richardson Resigns As DCEH CEO
Brent Richardson has resigned as CEO of Dream Center Education Holdings after a tumultuous year since the non-profit took over three chains of career education schools — the Art Institutes, Argosy University, and South University — formerly owned by for-profit EDMC. A person close to DCEH management confirmed the resignation. Under Richardson, the former CEO
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Dream Center Schools Announce DeVos-Blessed Restructuring
Late today, Dream Center Education Holdings announced it would restructure its three chains of career colleges, which have been in a state of upheaval — with campus closures, layoffs, accreditor woes, and false statements to students — through the entire year that the new non-profit DCEH has operated the former EDMC for-profit schools. In an email
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Turmoil at Dream Center Colleges Spills Open With Seattle “At-Risk” Designation
The financial and organizational turmoil at Dream Center Education Holdings (DCEH), reported to me by multiple staff in recent weeks, has spilled into the open with, at least, a new letter from the Washington state higher education oversight body. In a letter sent Thursday to the campus director of DCEH’s Art Institute of Seattle (Ai
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Troubled College Operator Drops Lawsuit Against DeVos. Why?
The Center for Excellence in Higher Education, operator of a chain of colleges repeatedly caught deceiving and short-changing students, has quietly dismissed its lawsuit against the Department of Education, a case aimed at reversing the Obama administration’s 2016 rejection of the company’s bid to be treated as a non-profit institution. It’s unclear from the court
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