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.
Exxon’s Conspiracy Charges Aim To Derail Climate Lawsuits
Oil giant ExxonMobil is engaged in unprecedented efforts to sue and harass in court the very people who are investigating and suing the company over global warming. Faced with determined efforts by states and localities to hold it and other fossil fuel companies accountable for contributing to, and concealing the evidence of, climate change, Exxon
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For-Profit College Lawyer Suggests DeVos Draft Matched Industry Wish List
As discussions grew contentious at the Department of Education’s meetings to repeal and replace the Obama administration’s rule to protect defrauded students, an apparently exasperated for-profit college industry lawyer seemed to admit that a draft rule proposed by the Department closely matched the wish list of schools in her industry. The 2016 Obama borrower defense
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Trump Terrible 10: Treasonous Edition
Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny, as someone once said. But now we’re mad, the Kochs are glad, and the tax cut for the rich means we don’t have any money. Which is awful. Since 2017, Republic Report‘s “Trump Terrible 10” has ranked the week’s 10 most disgraceful figures in Trump
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Watch Live: DeVos Minions Destroy Student Protections
You can watch a live stream, right now, of the Donald Trump-Betsy DeVos Department of Education destroying government regulations aimed at curbing well-documented, egregious abuses committed against students by for-profit colleges. The only reason you can watch this live stream of the DeVos Department doing the bidding of the for-profit college industry is because advocates
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DeVos And The For-Profit Colleges’ Self-Destruct Strategy
For-profit colleges have a decision to make. The Betsy DeVos Department of Education has now formally proposed to almost completely dismantle the rules issued by the Obama administration to protect students and taxpayers against predatory college behavior — deceptive marketing and recruiting, sky-high prices, poor education quality, financial aid abuses. If the for-profit schools endorse
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New Report Underscores Corinthian-Zenith College Debacle- and DeVos Disgrace
Attorney Clark Kent Ervin, the independent monitor for Zenith Education, a chain of career colleges, has just released his final report. Zenith was an experiment, pursued by the Department of Education, to see if a large predatory for-profit college chain that ruined many students’ lives could be purchased by a non-profit group with no
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Infographic: Trump’s Towers of Corruption
Michael Wolff’s Fire & Fury quotes Steve Bannon as saying that Robert Mueller’s investigation is “all about money laundering.” If that’s so, Donald Trump may be in real trouble. A new report [PDF] released by Representative Jackie Speier (D-CA) collects the available evidence that Trump’s real estate deals — many of them involving known criminals
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DeVos May Allow Troubling Conversion of Predatory College Chain
Politico reports this morning that Trump Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos may be ready to reverse the Obama Administration’s 2016 decision to reject the application of the predatory CollegeAmerica/Stevens-Henager chain to be treated as a non-profit school for purposes of Department regulation. That would be good for the chain’s wealthy operator, Carl Barney, but, as with
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