James Harris Fairchild (1817–1902) was an American educator, author, and third president of Oberlin College.

Soon after his birth his parents moved to Brownhelm, Lorain County, Ohio, and settled on a farm about ten miles from the present site of Oberlin College.

The year after graduation he was appointed tutor in the college, was ordained in 1841, and in 1842 became professor of Latin and Greek.

[3] Fairchild's wife, Mary Fletcher Kellogg, was one of the first group of four women to be admitted to a college in the United States.

Her family moved to a frontier area of Louisiana, and Fairchild, who'd known her while they were students at Oberlin, came down and married her in November 1841.