For more than 30 years, significant research in the United States has found that racial and ethnic minorities suffer disproportionately from nearness to environmental disamenities compared with white non‐Hispanics and that these results persist even controlling for poverty and “which came first,” the minorities or the disamenities. The engrained discriminatory findings of this environmental justice (EJ) research have led some to argue that we observe “systemic racism,” built into our social systems in ways that may be difficult to perceive. Yet, within the history of the United States, racial and ethnic minorities are not the only groups that have been systematically discriminated against; various religious groups also have histories of discrimination. Here we consider whether, holding constant race and ethnicity, some religious groups may also suffer from “EJ syndrome.” Since the US Census does not collect data on religion, to measure the presence of some religious groups that may be discriminated against, we use an original dataset on the presence of Jewish, Muslim, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐day Saints (LDS, aka Mormon), and Roman Catholic houses of worship within California's Census tracts. Our results indicate that even controlling for race/ethnicity and income, the presence of Jewish or Muslim houses of worship in a California Census tract increases the likelihood of environmental burden as measured by the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 index of pollution and community vulnerability.

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The difference between the Muslim and non-Muslim world in terms of educational gender equality has been blamed on the Islamic faith, and sometimes on a lack of modernization. Thus, I examine how Islam reduces educational gender equality and how/if its influence varies from one Muslim country to another.Method: I use Time-series-cross-section (TSCS) analysis for 29 Muslim countries between 1980 and 2010 to examine the influence of Arab culture on educational gender parity. Result: The result indicates that the religious culture of Arab states seems to be highly associated with the educational gender gap. Also, the positive effect of modernization is more significant in Non-Arab Muslim countries than in Arab Muslim countries. Conclusion:These findings are informative to educational policymakers since they explain why the international and local efforts on improving educational gender equality have not been as successful in the Muslim world as is the case in other societies. KEYWORDS culture, educational gender equality, modernization, religionEven though the war against gender inequality has been going for over half a century, educational gender inequality still persists in many countries; most of these countries are Muslim (UNESCO report 2019:7).

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Yemen has been the target of a high level of drone strikes by the US government, but we know very little about public reaction to such strikes, even though scholars of foreign policy have been concerned about the possibility of blowback from the Yemeni public.We conducted 63 in-depth interviews to assess how Yemenis think about terrorism and US counterterrorism strategies. In particular, we were interested in evidence of blowback among the public. We find that Yemenis have very negative views toward drone strikes, primarily related to the death of innocent bystanders and violations of sovereignty. We also see evidence of blowback in our interviews, with respondents expressing the belief that US counterterrorism policies contribute to the creation of new insurgents, the destabilization of the government, and the deterioration of US-Yemeni relations.At the same time, a substantial portion of interviewees think the United States can follow other strategies to help Yemen combat terrorism within its borders.Malala Yousafzai, a young women's-education activist from Pakistan, had a private audience with the Obamas in October 2013. During the meeting, the 16-year-old challenged the president about US counterterrorism strategies. Malala said that she "expressed [her] concerns that drone attacks are fueling terrorism. Innocent victims are killed in these acts, and they lead to resentment among the Pakistani people. If we refocus efforts on education it will make a big impact." 1 While Malala 1 Philip Rucker, "Malala Yousafzai meets with the Obamas in the Oval Office," Washington Post, October 11, 2013, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2013/10/11/malala-yousafzai-meets-with-the-obamas-inthe-oval-office/.