About: David Halperin
Twitter: @DaHalperin
Bio: David Halperin, a self-employed lawyer based in Washington DC, engages in public advocacy work on a wide range of issues, including higher education and climate change. He also advises organizations and companies on strategy, policy, communications, and legal matters, and he is of counsel to Public.Resource.org.
Halperin was previously: founding director of Campus Progress and senior vice president at the Center for American Progress; senior policy advisor for Howard Dean's 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/RealNetworks; counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee; and law clerk to U.S. District Judge Gerhard A. Gesell.
He has represented clients in the U.S. Supreme Court and various state and federal courts.
He 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 the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Transportation, and spoken at major events held by the National Consumer Law Center, Consumer Federation of America, Arizona State University, American Educational Research Association, and Center for American Progress.
Halperin has served for more than a decade on the board of directors of Public Citizen.
He graduated from Yale College and Yale Law School.
As Key Meeting Starts, Biden Team Must Keep Promise to Curb Predatory Colleges
Today, the U.S. Department of Education begins a new round of negotiation sessions with a group of higher education stakeholders as the start of a process of creating new rules to hold colleges accountable for predatory abuses. The Department last week released a series of papers aimed at starting debate on issues related to
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Get the COVID Vaccine Already, Part 2
I needed a COVID test and finally found one at a church by the airport. Only nine cars ahead of me, but it was moving kinda slow because only one person was doing all the work. This young woman was smart and diligent, doing her best. She looked at my form and said, “You
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15 Higher Education Stories Worth Investigating
As we approach the end of 2021, here are some higher education stories that I wish I had more time to pursue now. Some of them I’ve dug into pretty deeply already, while others I haven’t done much with yet. If you have info on these matters, please let me know. Or investigate them yourself.
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Financial Aid Administrator Group Questions Policies Aimed At Curbing Predatory Colleges
In recent weeks, the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA) — whose members are financial aid professionals from colleges and universities across the country — has lent its prestige to supporting policy positions similar to views being pushed by the for-profit college industry, a higher education sector where many schools offer a toxic
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It’s Smart To Target Pell Grant Increases to Types of Colleges That Do Better For Students
Within the Build Back Better social spending bill on Capitol Hill is a provision that increases the maximum annual federal Pell grant for college students, currently $6,495, by $550. The measure excludes for-profit colleges from that modest increase. A decade of government and media investigations have shown that many for-profit colleges have offered a toxic
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Students Want Court to Dump DeVos Rule Protecting Scam Colleges. Biden Team Opposes.
The Biden Administration is urging a federal judge to keep in effect, for now, a rule, issued by Trump education secretary Betsy DeVos, that weakened the power of the U.S. Department of Education to curb abuses by for-profit colleges. The 2019 DeVos rule was basically a one-line cancellation of a 2014 Obama administration rule called
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California Opens Fraud Trial Against College Now Owned by Arizona
California’s attorney general this week began presenting evidence in his office’s long-awaited fraud trial against for-profit Ashford University. In the case, filed in 2017, the state alleges that Ashford engaged in unfair and fraudulent business practices, with school recruiters fueled by a “boiler room” culture that demanded they meet enrollment quotas. The recruiters, in turn,
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Education Dept. Delays Renewal of For-Profit College Accreditor
The U.S. Department of Education announced this morning that it is delaying a decision on renewing approval of the Accrediting Commission on Career Schools and Colleges (ACCSC), one of the outside accrediting bodies charged with evaluating the educational quality of colleges. Department recognition is crucial for accreditors, because without it, schools accredited by an agency
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