C. Christine Fair

Carol Christine Fair (born 1968) is an American political scientist. She is an associate professor in the Security Studies Program within the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Her work is primarily focused on counter-terrorism and South Asian topics.

Academic career

Fair received her PhD from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilization at the University of Chicago in 2004. Previously, she received a masters of arts and Bachelor of Science from the same university.

Fair served as a senior political scientist with the RAND Corporation, political officer with the UN Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, and a senior research associate with the United States Institute of Peace. She specializes in political and military affairs in South Asia. She has served as a senior fellow at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center, a senior resident fellow at the Institute of Defense Studies and Analyses (New Delhi), and took a Reagan–Fascell Democracy Fellowship in the spring of 2017.

Fair is a Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor in the Peace and Security Studies Program (SSP) within Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.
She has authored or co-authored, and co-edited several books, including ''Pakistan's Enduring Challenges'' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), ''Policing Insurgencies: Cops as Counterinsurgents'' (Oxford University Press, 2014);''Political Islam and Governance in Bangladesh'' (Routledge, 2010); ''Treading on Hallowed Ground: Counterinsurgency Operations in Sacred Spaces'' (Oxford University Press, 2008); ''The Madrassah Challenge: Militancy and Religious Education in Pakistan'' (USIP, 2008), and  Cuisines of the Axis of Evil and Other Irritating States (Globe Pequot, 2008), ''Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War'' (Oxford University Press, 2014), ''In Their Own Words: Understanding the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba'' (Oxford University Press, 2019), among others. Her current book project is ''Militant Piety and Lines of Control''.

Views

Fair has published several articles defending the use of drone strikes in Pakistan and has been critical of analyses by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and other humanitarian organizations, arguing that drone strikes are accurate, have reduced casualties, have targeted Taliban leadership, and are popular among some Pakistanis.

Academic controversies

Fair's work and viewpoints have been the subject of criticism. In 2015, journalist Glenn Greenwald dismissed Fair's arguments in support of drone strikes as "rank propaganda", arguing there are "enormous amounts of evidence" showing drones are counterproductive, pointing to mass civilian casualties and independent studies. Commenting on her debate with Greenwald, Brookings Institution senior fellow Shadi Hamid called Fair's arguments "surprisingly weak". In 2010, Fair denied the notion that drones caused any civilian deaths, alleging Pakistani media reports were responsible for creating this perception. Jeremy Scahill wrote that Fair's statement was "simply false" and contradicted by New America's detailed study on drone casualties. Fair later said that casualties are caused by the UAVs, but maintains they are the most effective tool for fighting terrorism.

Writing for ''The Atlantic'', Conor Friedersdorf challenged Fair's co-authored narrative that the U.S. could legitimize support in Pakistan for its drone program using 'education' and 'public diplomacy'; he called it an "example of interventionist hubris and naivete" built upon flawed interpretation of public opinion data. An article in the Middle East Research and Information Project called the work "some of the most propagandistic writing in support of President Barack Obama’s targeted kill lists to date." It censured the view that Pakistanis needed to be informed by the U.S. what is "good for them" as fraught with imperialist condescension; or the assumption that the Urdu

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