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 College Investor Now Owns Controlling Share of Leading Education Trade Publication
Quad Partners, a New York private equity firm that is invested heavily in the for-profit college industry, and whose founder has aggressively opposed regulation of that troubled industry, has acquired a controlling stake in the respected trade publication Inside Higher Ed (IHE), which often reports on for-profit colleges and the policy disputes surrounding them. There has been no public announcement,
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Declaring Corinthian Colleges Too Big To Fail: A Terrible Idea
The U.S. Department of Education has blessed a deal under which a non-profit student debt collection company, Minnesota-based Education Credit Management Corporation (ECMC), will pay $24 million to acquire 56 campuses, operating under the brands Everest and WyoTech, owned by collapsing Corinthian Colleges, one of the most abusive and deceptive for-profit college companies. The terms
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30 years after Bhopal, Long Past Time To Make Chemical Plants Safer
Thirty years ago this month, a gas leak at a Union Carbide pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, created a toxic cloud that eventually killed perhaps 20,000 people and injured 500,000 more. No chemical accident since then has approached the scale of the Bhopal disaster, but chemical plant tragedies continue every year, including in the United States — most
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Neutron CEO Tells Customers That Republic Report Stories Are False; Ex-Employees Disagree
While one for-profit college in Miami, called FastTrain, has just been sued by law enforcement for, among other things, allegedly hiring scantily-clad women to lure men to its admissions office (an allegation noted by Republic Report back in May 2012), another group of operators in Salt Lake City has been using a different scam — phony bait-and-switch websites —
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For-Profit College Marketer Thrived By Posting Fake Ads To Popular Job Sites
Neutron Interactive, a Salt Lake City-based business, regularly posted fake job listings on popular job websites including Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com for the purpose of tricking job-seekers into visiting its own websites, according to former Neutron employees. These Neutron Interactive websites, still operating today, also promise jobs, but in reality they usually offer none; their real purpose, say these former
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ECMC CEO Explains Deal To Buy Troubled Corinthian Campuses
Confirming rumors that have swirled for weeks, today ECMC Group announced it has reached an agreement to acquire 56 of the 107 campuses now owned by the crumbling, discredited Corinthian Colleges for-profit chain. A corporate filing from Corinthian says the purchase price is $24 million. I spoke with ECMC’s CEO Dave Hawn this morning to discuss. ECMC, a
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Still More Scam For-Profit College Websites – Linked to Dallas Mystery Man
I reported yesterday and this morning on scam websites that promise people help with jobs, food stamps, heat assistance, Medicaid — things that low-income and working Americans want — but the sites are really just fronts to get people’s phone numbers, so workers at a call center in Utah can pitch them on enrolling in
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More Scam Websites to Lure the Poor to For-Profit Colleges
Yesterday I reported on how a Utah-based company, Neutron Interactive, operated a website that promised jobs but was in reality a scam — it seemed to function mainly to send customer leads to at least one other company’s Salt Lake City call center, called EdSoup, whose only purpose, in turn, is to recruit people,
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