Jonah Clark
Crisis Director
Jonah is a Senior studying Comparative Politics with a minor in History at Clark University. Originally from Providence, Rhode Island, Jonah had the pleasure of visiting Rome and Perugia last spring, and it was there that he began to wonder: how exactly did Italy become Italy in the first place? In that moment, Jonah’s fifth and final ClarkMUN committee was born. After five years with MUN at Clark, Jonah is delighted to introduce students to the drama, intrigue, idealism and realpolitik that defined the founding of the Italian nation over 160 years ago, and he sincerely hopes that this crisis committee will be his best one yet.
Risorgimento! The Court and Cabinet of Victor Emmanuel II, 1859
Act I, Scene I. Setting: Turin, Piedmont-Sardinia, December 10, 1859. The balance of power on the Italian Peninsula is in flux. Rather than a united country, Italy is divided into several small Kingdoms, Duchies, Principalities, and Papal lands. To the East, the Habsburg Empire looms large over Northern Italy. To the West, its rival, France, hopes to expand its own influence. In the Northwest, a small subalpine kingdom prepares to upset the status quo for good. The curtain rises. Enter stage left: Victor Emmanuel — the second one — King of Sardinia, his will as resolute as his brow. Gathered in his court we find an assortment of writers, spies, princesses, and revolutionaries, none of them alike but for their common goal: uniting the Italian Peninsula once and for all. With the stage set but the lines yet to be written, delegates will take on the roles of some of history’s most intriguing and theatrical figures, each of them players in one of Europe’s most dramatic historical episodes: the Unification of Italy, the RISORGIMENTO!