20th century , the founder and first dean of the school, with General
Douglas MacArthur in 1946 With the help of Georgetown University president
John B. Creeden, Edmund A. Walsh spearheaded the founding of the School of Foreign Service and its establishment was announced on November 25, 1919. In 1921, it graduated its first class of
Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service (BSFS) undergraduate students. 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). In August 1932, the SFS was moved to the
Healy Hall, a
National Historic Landmark. In 1958, two years after the death of Walsh, the school was renamed after him and moved to the Walsh Building in a ceremony dedicated by
President Eisenhower in honor of Walsh. In 1936, the SFS Division of Business and Public Administration launched the Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) degree. In 1957, under the leadership of Joseph Sebes, the division was
spun off from the SFS, becoming the School of Business Administration — later renamed
McDonough School of Business in honor of Robert Emmett McDonough (SFS'49). In 1962, the
Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) was founded at Georgetown University as a
think tank to conduct policy studies and strategic analyses of political, economic and security issues throughout the world. 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. In 1986, the university's
board of directors voted to sever all ties with CSIS. on Georgetown's main campus.Since 1982, the school has been housed in the
Edward B. Bunn. Intercultural Center (ICC) on Georgetown's
main campus. In 1989, the Salaam Intercultural Resource Center, which is located on the top floor of the ICC, was opened in a ceremony presided by President
Jimmy Carter. The center is a gift by
Hany M. Sala'am and has housed the school's MSFS program since 1989. opened the Salaam Intercultural Resource Center, which has housed Georgetown's
Master of Science in Foreign Service (MSFS) program since 1989.In 1975, the
Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) was launched as the first academic institution in the United States to focusing exclusively on the
Arab world. 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, in addition to donation from
Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) governments. In 1999,
King Abdullah II of Jordan (MSFS'87) dedicated a new facility for the center. In 1978, the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (ISD) was founded to bring together diplomats, practitioners and scholars to study
diplomatic statecraft theory and practice. Past ISD fellows include Georgian deputy prime minister
Giorgi Baramidze From 1975 until 2016, the ISD also awarded the
Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting to journalists in recognition of their distinguished reporting on foreign policy and diplomacy. In 1992, following the
collapse of the Soviet Union and the
Eastern Bloc, the SFS launched the Pew Economic Freedom Fellows Program to train future leaders of
transitional states from Eastern Europe and
post-Soviet countries. Notable fellows include Latvian finance minister
Uldis Osis, Kazhastan deputy prime minister
Kairat Kelimbetov, and Lithuania president
Dalia Grybauskaite, who was later awarded an honorary
Doctor of Humane Letters degree by Georgetown University in 2013. In 1995, the Security Studies Program (SSP), which was founded in 1977 as the National Security Studies Program (NSSP) and hosted at the
U.S. Department of Defense headquarters in
the Pentagon, was moved to Georgetown's main campus and incorporated into the SFS.
21st century In 2002, the school studied the feasibility of opening a campus in
Qatar Foundation's Education City in
Doha,
Qatar. In 2005, the
School of Foreign Service in Qatar (SFS-Q) was officially opened and welcomed its first class of undergraduate students. 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. In 2005,
Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal gave $20 million to the school's
Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding to promote
interfaith understanding and the study of the
Muslim world. The gift was the second-largest ever given to Georgetown at that point, and the center was renamed in his honor. In 2011, following the
United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325, U.S. Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton launched the
Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) and served as its founding chair. , who served as
U.S. Secretary of State under President
Bill Clinton (SFS'68), was a frequent winner of the school’s Outstanding Professor Award. 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. In October 2023, Georgetown announced that it was no longer considering renaming the school after Albright. In November 2023,
Indonesian president Joko Widodo announced Georgetown's partnership with the
Indonesian government to open a satellite campus in the country. ==Academics==