Founded in 1919, SFS is the oldest continuously operating school for international affairs in the United States,[2][3] predating the U.S. Foreign Service by six years.

Walsh to prepare students for all major forms of foreign representation from commercial, financial, consular to diplomatic.

[13] The following year, the school began to offer the first international relations graduate program in the United States, the Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS).

[20] When Henry Kissinger retired from his position as U.S. Secretary of State in 1977, he declined offers of professorship from Harvard, Yale, Penn, Columbia, and Oxford, and decided to teach at Georgetown SFS instead, making CSIS the base for his Washington operations.

CCAS is a National Resource Center on the Middle East and North Africa (NRC-MENA) and funded by Title VI grants from the U.S. Department of Education,[28] in addition to donation from Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments.

In 2005, the School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q) was officially opened and welcomed its first class of undergraduate students.

[40] In 2015, the school was renamed to Georgetown University in Qatar (GU-Q) as it broadened its remit to include executive masters and professional programs.

[43][44] In June 2023, the administrators announced the plan to rename the school in honor of the late Madeleine Albright, who served as a professor at SFS both before and after her tenure as U.S. secretary of state.

It attracted criticism due to Albright's controversial legacy and the lack of consultation with the school's community members.

[49][50] In January 2025, Georgetown SFS Asia-Pacific (GSAP) campus was launched in Jakarta, Indonesia, to offer graduate masters and visiting student programs.

Georgetown's programs in international relations have consistently ranked among the best in the world in surveys of the field's academics that have been published biennially since 2005 by Foreign Policy.

[69] In 2024, Georgetown's master's programs were ranked first by all three groups of respondents: international relations faculty, policymakers, and think tank staffers.

[4] In a Pipeline to the Beltway survey of makers of American foreign-policy from 2011, Georgetown ranked second overall in the quality of preparation for a career in the U.S. government, regardless of degree earned.

[71] The School of Foreign Service also sponsors a flagship peer-reviewed academic publication, the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (GJIA), which is published by Johns Hopkins University Press and run by undergraduate and graduate students.

In 2025, the school opened a facility in Jakarta, Indonesia, known as Georgetown SFS Asia-Pacific (GSAP), in partnership with the Indonesian government.