Amena Sadat, a political science Ph.D. student at the University of California, Riverside, fled Afghanistan with only the clothes on her back after the Taliban took over.

Her educational journey has been harrowing. Many of her family members did not want her to study, and one, a local politician, even canceled a scholarship rather than award it to her. But she did not give up.

Imran Ghori reports for the university publication Inside UCR. (August 2023)