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.
Strong Mandatory Arbitration Ban on For-Profit Colleges in Peril
Last Friday the Department of Education took a strong stand in favor of banning colleges that receive federal student aid from forcing students to bring disputes with their schools into secret arbitration proceedings, rather than allowing students to go to court. Today in the middle of the last day of the negotiated rulemaking session on
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Top Democratic Lawyer Pushed Pentagon To End U. of Phoenix Suspension
Lawyer Jamie Gorelick, who served in the Bill Clinton Administration as general counsel of the Department of Defense and later as Deputy Attorney General, this year successfully pressed the Pentagon on behalf of the nation’s biggest for-profit college, the University of Phoenix, to lift a suspension of the school for alleged recruiting abuses directed at U.S. military
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VA To Warn Veterans About DeVry
The Department of Veterans Affairs today suspended for-profit DeVry University from the VA’s “Principles of Excellence” status under the GI Bill. The VA said in a statement that it had taken the action after it had reviewed a recent lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission alleging that DeVry has engaged in deceptive marketing. In today’s statement and in a
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Dept of Educ Wants To End “Outrageous” Forced Arbitration by For-Profit Colleges
The Department of Education tonight released a new draft of regulations on student debt relief, in advance of the third round of rulemaking meetings to be held next week, and in a press release (see below) accompanying the proposal the Department appears to take a hard line against the fine-print language that for-profit colleges have
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Arizona: For-Profit College Paradise?
As government regulators and law enforcement agencies in Washington and around the country have come to recognize that some of the biggest for-profit colleges have been deceiving and abusing students, and as media reports have exposed these abuses, and as many students have started to look elsewhere for their educations, at least one State
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Appeals Court Rejects For-Profit College Attack on Obama Rule
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington DC this morning rejected the for-profit college trade group’s challenge to the Obama Administration’s gainful employment rule, a regulation that holds career training programs accountable for consistently leaving students with overwhelming debt. Perhaps recognizing that the war of words over the rule had gone on
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Wall St Journal Again Posts Anti-Student Op-Ed Without Disclosing For-Profit College Ties
The Wall Street Journal today published an op-ed arguing against providing broad student loan debt relief for people who were deceived by their colleges. The co-authors of the article, Jorge Klor de Alva and Mark Schneider, contend that such relief will be expensive — potentially more than $1 billion for students of now-shuttered for-profit Corinthian Colleges
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Romney & Rubio Attack Trump University, But Both Are Tied to Predatory Colleges
Mitt Romney will charge in a speech today, according to excerpts released in advance, that Donald Trump’s “promises are as worthless as a degree from Trump University.” Romney’s attack follows Marco Rubio’s recent hits on Trump’s unlicensed for-profit business “school”; at the last GOP debate, Rubio charged, “There are people that borrowed $36,000 to go to
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