Kenneth J. Hammond is Professor of History at New Mexico State University

New Mexico State University

New Mexico State University at Las Cruces , is a major land-grant university in Las Cruces, New Mexico, United States...

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Hammond was a student and Students for a Democratic Society

Students for a Democratic Society (1960 organization)

Students for a Democratic Society was a student activist movement in the United States that was one of the main iconic representations of the country's New Left. The organization developed and expanded rapidly in the mid-1960s before dissolving at its last convention in 1969...

 leader at Kent State University

Kent State University

Kent State University is a public research university located in Kent, Ohio, United States. The university has eight campuses around the northeast Ohio region with the main campus in Kent being the largest...

 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

Beijing , also known as Peking , is the capital of the People's Republic of China and one of the most populous cities in the world, with a population of 19,612,368 as of 2010. The city is the country's political, cultural, and educational center, and home to the headquarters for most of China's...

. 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

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

. In 2007, Hammond was appointed director of the Confucius Institute, a think-tank on the NMSU campus that is dedicated to studying and publicizing China and Chinese culture. He is the editor of the journal Ming Studies.

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

Kent State shootings

The Kent State shootings—also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre—occurred at Kent State University in the city of Kent, Ohio, and involved the shooting of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard on Monday, May 4, 1970...

. 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.