Kenneth J. Hammond is Professor of History at

New Mexico State University New Mexico State University (NMSU or NM State) is a public, land-grant, research university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States. Founded in 1888, it is the state's oldest public institution of higher education, and was the original land-g ...

. Hammond was a student and

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships a ...

leader at

Kent State University Kent State University (KSU) is a Public university, public research university in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university includes seven regional campuses in Northeast Ohio located in Kent State University at Ashtabula, Ashtabula, Kent State ...

from 1967 to 1970. He later (1985) completed his degree in political science, then studied Modern Chinese language at the Beijing Foreign Languages Normal School in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

. Hammond received an M.A. in Regional Studies - East Asia (1989), and a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages (1994) from

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. In 2007, Hammond was appointed director of the

Confucius Institute Confucius Institutes (CI; ) are public educational and cultural promotion programs of the state of China. The stated aim of the program is to promote Chinese language and culture, support local Chinese teaching internationally, and facilita ...

, a cultural initiative funded in part by

Hanban The Centre for Language Education and Cooperation () is an organization under the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China tasked with "providing Chinese language and cultural teaching resources and services worldwide". It is common ...

on the NMSU campus that is dedicated to studying and publicizing China and Chinese culture. He is the editor of the journal ''Ming Studies''. The

was closed in 2020 due to political pressure from the Federal government. While at Kent State, Hammond authored a study of local politics entitled ''Who Rules Kent?'' and was active in the political events that culminated in the May 4, 1970 shootings at the university. He was indicted as one of the "Kent 25" and was lead plaintiff in the federal lawsuit ''Hammond v. Brown'' which resulted in the suppression of the Special Grand Jury report on the Kent State shootings. All charges against the Kent 25 were dropped in December 1971. In 1976 he took part in the "Move the Gym" demonstrations at Kent, on the site of the 1970 shootings.

External links

Hammond's web page at New Mexico State University From Yao to Mao: 5000 Years of Chinese History
a 36 lecture series by Kenneth J. Hammond on audio and DVD.
Story of the Confucius Institute's closure in the local Las Cruces Sun News newspaperInterview with Prof. Ken Hammond "The China Initiative and the New McCarthyism" by Danny Haiphong
Year of birth missing (living people) Living people New Mexico State University faculty Kent State University alumni Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni 21st-century American historians 21st-century American male writers American male non-fiction writers {{US-historian-stub

See also

External links