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Academic World Quest
The region’s top high-school teams compete on global affairs each spring. Coaches and judges are SDWAC members and partner faculty.
Featured — Distinguished Speaker Series
Distinguished Speaker Series: The Tijuana River Crisis and the Future of Cross-Border Cooperation.
Untreated sewage and contamination in the Tijuana River watershed have triggered a binational crisis. Leaders and experts from both sides of the border unpack the causes, the impacts, and what cross-border cooperation can look like going forward.
What we do
The San Diego World Affairs Council is a nonpartisan forum for the conversations our region cannot afford to skip — diplomacy, security, trade, climate, migration, and the global forces remaking the border we live on. We bring the world into a room and ask San Diegans to listen, ask, and act.
— The Council, San Diego, California
The Calendar
Upcoming events
Three programs on the books this quarter. Members register first; seats are released to the public ten days prior.
View the full calendar →-
July 11, 2026 10:00 AM • 8980 Villa La Jolla Drive, La Jolla, CA 92037
Pillars
Five programs. One conversation.
Everything we do is in service of the same question: how does San Diego show up in the world, and how does the world show up here?
01
Distinguished Speakers Series
The flagship. Ambassadors, scholars, and practitioners on the questions that matter — from Indo-Pacific strategy to the future of humanitarian aid.
02
Engage San Diego
The hard conversations — extremism, race, the border — held with a moderator and an audience that doesn’t want sound bites.
03
Academic World Quest
The region’s premier high-school competition on global affairs. Teams compete on geography, treaties, and current events — winners advance to the national finals.
04
Young Professionals
For the rising generation of San Diegans in policy, defense, trade, and tech. International Trivia Nights, off-record briefings, and a network that travels.
05
Travel with SDWAC
Curated trips that put the speakers’ arguments on the ground — embassies, ministries, and the markets where geopolitics is actually transacted.
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More ways in.
Apply to intern. Volunteer at an event. Submit a piece to the Writer Corps. Sponsor a series. The Council moves at the speed of the people who show up.
Students & Campus
The next generation deserves a seat at the table.
SDWAC works directly with students and faculty across UC San Diego, San Diego State, the University of San Diego, USD School of Law, and Cal State San Marcos.
We bring foreign policy out of the seminar room — and we put students in the rooms where it’s being practiced.
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Internships & Campus Liaisons
Year-round, rolling. Five tracks — Campus Liaison, Events, Outreach, Communications, Web & Media. Free one-year membership for accepted interns.
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Student Accounts
Free with .edu verification. Free entry to events is already standard. A student account adds the directory, the Diplomatic Pouch, and Writer Corps eligibility on the same merit ladder as paying members.
Beats we cover
Become a Member
Three reasons people join.
i.
The room.
Members register first and pay less. For sold-out events — and several have been — that’s the difference between attending and reading the recap.
ii.
The network.
Foreign service alumni, retired flag officers, faculty, journalists, attorneys, founders. Members say what makes SDWAC valuable is who’s in the next chair.
iii.
The work.
Members can publish on Insights through the Writer Corps. A byline that says “Contributor, SDWAC” is a real credential — especially for students and emerging professionals.
Join the Council
Free for students with .edu · $100/yr Regular · No auto-renew without consent.
Affiliations & partners
