Emily Yoffe

Yoffe has written extensively about campus sexual assault and the Obama administration’s effort to end it, describing the administration’s reforms of Title IX – the United States federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in federally-funded education programs – as a worthy goal that went awry. Her article in Slate, “The College Rape Overcorrection” was a National Magazine Award finalist in Public Service in 2015. She wrote a series on campus sexual assault for The Atlantic on due process, junk science, and racial disparities.

She has praised #MeToo, but expressed concerns about overreach. She wrote about “The Problem With #BelieveSurvivors”, the consequences of Al Franken’s resignation from the Senate, and the dangers of "endlessly expand[ing] the categories of victim and perpetrator."

In 2006 outgoing columnist Margo Howard turned Slate' s "Dear Prudence" advice column over to Yoffe. The column appears four times per week, including one day of live chats and one day in which the letters are responded to using a video instead of text. In November 2015, Yoffe published her last "Dear Prudence" column, and has since been replaced by Daniel M. Lavery, co-founder of The Toast.

In June 2005, Bloomsbury published Yoffe's What the Dog Did: Tales from a Formerly Reluctant Dog Owner. That year it was named Best Book of the Year by Dogwise, and selected as the Best General Interest Dog Book by the Dog Writers Association of America.

Yoffe grew up in Newton, Massachusetts and graduated from Wellesley College in 1977.

Emily J. Yoffe (born October 15, 1955) is an American journalist and contributing writer for The Atlantic. From 1998 to 2016 she was a regular contributor to Slate magazine, notably as Dear Prudence. She has also written for The New York Times; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Washington Post; Esquire; The Los Angeles Times; Texas Monthly; and many other publications. Yoffe began her career as a staff writer at The New Republic before moving on to other publications.