In the fall of 1997, a group of undergraduate students at Johns Hopkins University recognized the need for a forum to discuss and debate global affairs and international issues. Merging the existing Woodrow Wilson International Studies Symposium and International Studies Forum Symposium, students formally created the “Symposium on Foreign Affairs.” Their first series launched in Spring 1998 with ten events, nearly all featuring foreign ambassadors and Maryland officials. The Symposium quickly expanded over the next few years, hosting notables that include Sonia Gandhi, Shimon Peres, and Noam Chomsky.

In 2002, the name of the series changed permanently from “Symposium on Foreign Affairs” to the “Foreign Affairs Symposium” (FAS for short). The Symposium shifted away from individual speakers, instead hosting panels that covered current, controversial topics ranging from drug wars in Colombia to the war in Iraq. Over time, the series returned to inviting individual notable leaders to speak and then engage students in discussion in coordination with the Leadership Engagement and Experiential Development (LEED) Office and the Hopkins Student Organization for Programming (HOP). Since then, the symposium has undergone rapid growth each year, continuing to expand in size and reach across a multitude of different topics and experiences through lectures, moderated discussions, and debates.