Canadian Civil Liberties Association chief Nathalie Des Rosiers will not bite the hand that feeds her

There you have it! (Alternative LINK to VIDEO) (Video also available on youTube LINK)

Canadian Civil Liberties Association chief Nathalie Des Rosiers responds to the Ann Coulter fiasco at the University of Ottawa:

She excuses the university administration by suggesting that Coulter's crew needlessly canceled the Ottawa event to generate publicity and then suggests that the obvious answer to these freedom of expression student demonstrations of differing opinions on campuses is MORE POLICE.

We kid you not - watch the video!

With civil liberties bosses like that you don't need authoritarian university presidents or anything. Just increase the police budgets and take on more insurance policies.

Maybe it's just us but we feel that there is at least an appearance of a conflict of interest when the chief of a national civil liberties association has her salary paid by a major university and allows herself to make media commentary on an international freedom of expression scandal involving the said university and its chief administrators...

And when that civil liberties association decides to not formally reprimand the university administration as it has done in writing in the recent past in a less high-profile case under the previous chief whose salary was not paid by the said university...

Maybe its just us?

Because despite a media frenzy like Canadian academia has not previously seen no journalist has pointed to the surprisingly weak and apologetic public musings of the chief of the Canadian Cicil Liberties Association (CCLA) regarding the University of Ottawa Allan Rock administration's violations of a university's defining principle of free speech (HERE).

No journalists have been struck by this anomaly enough to "follow the money" and ask who pays Nathalie Des Rosiers' salary?

After all, the Rock administration has been rightly and formally severely criticized for its behaviour in this matter by the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT) (HERE) and was severely and formally criticized by Des Rosiers' predecessor concerning its last (2009) media-reported violation of civil liberties on campus (HERE).

Even Rock's traditional Ottawa media ally (The Ottawa Citizen) has laid the blame squarely at president Allan Rock's feet in rather unflattering terms (HERE and HERE). But the CCLA has seen no reason to write to Rock to come to the defense of academic freedom and civil rights in the highest profile case of this nature in recent Canadian academic history?

Nathalie Des Rosiers retained her Full Professorship at the University of Ottawa and her University of Ottawa salary (at $173,583.36 per year, 2008 salary) when she accepted the position as head of the CCLA in July 2009.