My goal is to build a nested vector of dimension n consisting of a single element p. As an example let me choose n=2 and p=1, so the output would be:
[[1 1] [1 1]]
Probably, you want something like this:
(defn square-matrix [n p]
(->> p (repeat n) (repeat n)))
Or, if you need vectors (not seqs):
(defn square-matrix [n p]
(->> p (repeat n) vec (repeat n) vec))