Jim Blandy may work for Mozilla, but otherwise he has no connection to the Rust project (nor Servo). He has not been involved in any of the design discussions, and his only commits to the Rust repo are four minor documentation fixes.

I've assisted Jim in giving presentations on Rust at OSCON this year, and trust me when I say that he has no qualms about criticizing the language when he sees fit. His perspective is definitely that of an outsider's, and like you I agree that that's ideal from a pedagogical point of view.