The strange case of Baylor U's Marc Ellis

An odd professor by the name of Marc Ellis is the Director of Baylor University’s Center for American and Jewish Studies in Texas. To get an idea of where Ellis' head is at, one need only read his recent quote extolling the vapid Occupy Movement:  "Think Karl Marx, the great exemplar of social justice."

This idolizer of the creator of a form of social justice that murdered 100 million people in the last century is an anti-Israel professor prone to weird statements like, "Put simply, "Jewish" has taken on an imperial and colonial flavor."

Baylor is trying to get rid of Ellis but no one outside the university administration, Ellis and his lawyers seems to know why, and no one is talking.

Ellis blames Baylor University's president Ken Starr for his woes. (Yes, that Ken Starr, the prosecutor who went after Bill Clinton for lying about his relationship with Monica Lewinsky) .

All parties agree that charges had been filed against Ellis, who said, "Former Baylor University presidents Herbert Reynolds, Robert Sloan, John Lilley and Bill Underwood were protective of me against tides of criticism which powerful others swept to my feet through the years..Thus, I wondered when Kenneth Starr became president if the protections would change.”

Ellis' supporters are centred at the group Jewish Voice for Peace, an organization made up largely of Reconstructionist Jews, a sect whose religious leaders seemingly get their divinity degrees from ads at the back of comic books. They contend that Ellis is being dismissed for his anti-Israel opinions.

They have started a petition which has anti-Zionist denizens like Desmond Tutu and Cornel West helming it, claiming, "Marc Ellis is under internal investigation in what looks more and more like a persecution to silence a Jewish voice of dissent. In short, Baylor is re-writing its rules to dismiss Marc Ellis from the faculty."

Yeah, except according to the Baylor Lariat, the Baptist university's student newspaper, neither Ellis nor his lawyers nor supporters will divulge which rules are allegedly being rewritten and what the charges are against him. The university can only disclose them with Ellis' consent and he has so far refused to give it. He appears to be alleging the university is selectively enforcing rules, but he won't say which ones.

Make of that what you will, but here is a man who wants people to rush to his defence, and won't tell them from what they are supposed to be defending him. That's just the sort of logic one could reasonably expect from the head of a Jewish studies department who seeks to cripple the country created as a Jewish refuge.