Author: Emily Carr

Dr. Emily Carr is a beach witch, love poet, ecofeminist professor and author of four collections of poetry. Carr was the founding director of the MFA in creative writing at Oregon State University–Cascades and creator of the B.A. in creative writing at the New College of Florida. These days she’s the first poetry professor on faculty at the Southern Illinois School of Medicine, with a mission of injecting healthy doses of awe, creativity, zest, hope and perspective into the problem-based learning curriculum.

To Fight the ‘War on Woke,’ We Need Poetry and Poets

I’m a former professor at the New College of Florida—I resigned the end of July.

On July 19, 2023, Robert Allen published an opinion piece in the Sarasota Herald Tribune criticizing the lack of ideological balance in the New College faculty and listing myself, faculty chair Amy Reid and gender studies professor Nick Clarkson as “pedagogical aberrations” that exemplified his point.

Shortly thereafter, I resigned—which would have happened regardless of Allen’s piece. However, Allen’s piece has invited me to speak up and, after much deliberation and careful wordsmithing, I’ve decided I want to share my story.