Charles Harting Fairbanks Jr. (1942–2017) was a prominent American political scientist, foreign policy expert, and neoconservative thinker specializing in Russia, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and served as executive director of the Foreign Policy Institute there, where he founded and directed the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute focusing on regional security and independence. A former U.S. State Department official, Fairbanks held key positions in the Reagan administration, including Deputy to the Director of the Policy Planning Staff and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Europe and the Soviet Union. He was a member of the IASPS Clean Break study group and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, authoring numerous articles and policy papers for outlets such as The Wall Street Journal and Foreign Affairs. Fairbanks advocated for robust U.S. engagement in post-Soviet states to counter Russian influence and promote democracy, supporting color revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine and critiquing authoritarianism in Russia. A signatory to influential neoconservative statements, including those from the Project for the New American Century, his work emphasized cultural and ideological factors in international relations, drawing from his deep knowledge of Russian history and language. He passed away on February 23, 2017, in Washington, D.C.