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

In 2007, Hammond was appointed director of the Confucius Institute, a cultural initiative funded in part by Hanban on the NMSU campus that is dedicated to studying and publicizing China and Chinese culture.

The Confucius Institute was closed in 2020 due to political pressure from the Federal government.

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.

In 1976 he took part in the "Move the Gym" demonstrations at Kent, on the site of the 1970 shootings.