John Ronald Unger II
B.A., West Virginia University, 1993M.A., University of Oxford
John Unger of Martinsburg, West Virginia, was a Rhodes Scholar and a Truman Scholar. He was named to USA Today?s All-USA College First Academic Team and received TIME magazine?s College Achievement Award, Phi Beta Kappa?s Albert Lee Strum Award, and the American Institute of Public Service?s Jefferson Award. He studied philosophy, politics, and economics at Oxford.
Unger coordinated relief efforts in Pilkhana, a Calcutta slum, for Mother Theresa and worked for the U.S. Refugee Program and Amnesty International in Hong Kong where he helped Vietnamese Boat People. After the Gulf War, he coordinated emergency relief to Kurdish refugees in Northern Iraq for the United Nations Operation Provide Comfort.
He was instrumental in establishing the WVU Office of Service Learning and the West Virginia Campus Compact. Governor Gaston Caperton appointed him to the National and Community Service Advisory Board in 1991.
In 1995, he served as Political Adviser to the Hong Kong Legislative Council where he helped establish Hong Kong?s highest court, the Court of Final Appeal, and a local human rights NGO, the Human Rights Monitor.
A Democrat from Berkeley County representing West Virginia Senate District 16, Unger was first elected to the Senate in 1998 at the age of 29, making him one of the youngest state senators in West Virginia history. He is an advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy?s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) regarding homeland security and economic development. He also produces and hosts a public affairs radio talk show in the Eastern Panhandle.