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.
For-Profit Colleges Sue To Block Protections for Defrauded Students and Taxpayers
A California-based trade group largely comprised of for-profit colleges late Wednesday sued Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos to block a 2016 Obama administration regulation, called the borrower defense rule, aimed at protecting students from predatory college practices. The rule they attack (1) implements a law already on the books that permits students who are defrauded by
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Trump is a Crook; House Should Start Impeachment Probe
Donald Trump is a crook. He had freshly-confirmed Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein write a little essay about Hillary Clinton emails and called that the reason for firing FBI director James Comey, but then tons of Trump associates immediately blabbed to the press with the real, obvious reason. Trump was “screaming” at the TV about
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After Comey: How To Be a Patriotic Insider
With unprecedented secrecy and increasingly disturbing acts inside the Trump administration, how can federal employees expose the truth? On April 27, Donald Trump signed an executive order creating within the Department of Veterans Affairs a new office charged with protecting whistleblowers, that is, Department staff who want to report wrongdoing inside the VA. The administration trumpeted this
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Do Indiana Taxpayers Want To Buy This For-Profit College?
Graham Holdings Co. announced this morning in a filing with the SEC that it plans to sell its for-profit Kaplan University to a new non-profit public-benefit corporation called New University that is affiliated with Indiana’s Purdue University, a state institution. Purdue confirmed the deal in a press release quoting its president, Mitch Daniels, the former
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Maryland Governor Candidate Backed Predatory Colleges
Alec Ross today announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for governor of Maryland. On his new campaign website, Ross includes a bio that cites impressive and admirable accomplishments — former Baltimore City middle school teacher, Obama 2008 campaign staffer, Senior Advisor for Innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, author, Senior Fellow at Johns
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Earth Day 2017: The New EPA and the Looming Climate Apocalypse
This is a guest post by Dick Russell, author of a new book, coming out next week: Horsemen of the Apocalypse: The Men Who Are Destroying Life On Earth – And What It Means To Our Children, edited and with an Introduction by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Closing in on half-a-century since the first Earth
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Chemical Security: Protecting Syrians, But Leaving Americans Exposed
This piece was written by Lieutenant General Russel L. Honoré, US Army (Ret), the former commander of Joint Task Force Katrina, and founder of the GreenARMY; Major General Randy Manner, US Army (Ret), a former acting director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency; and David Halperin, a lawyer and former staff member of the National
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Nursing Students Cry Foul At Schools’ New Testing Rules
In nursing schools across the country, students are complaining that administrators have suddenly sprung on them new requirements that they pass comprehensive tests before they can graduate. Some of these students charge that their school has added these new test requirements mid-course to weed out students who might be in danger of flunking the national
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