Response to the Cambridge University Labour Club

An invitation I, Tom Rowsell, received to speak at the Cambridge University Conservative Association, in my capacity as an historian and YouTuber, has recently been rescinded after a “cancel-culture” attack-posted to Instagram by the Cambridge University Labour Club.

The post highlighted objections to me and another guest, Jack Anderton. The post cites four items as evidence of my alleged 'racist, anti-black, and anti-Semitic' views; a misleading and unverified claim by Labour funded, far left, anti-white hate group Hope not Hate, thumbnails for two of my videos, and a screenshot of a tweet I made comparing two Direct-to-consumer genomics companies.

In this public statement I will defend all four examples as rational, factual, scientific and not “racist. Anti-black and anti-Semitic” as is claimed and/or implied by the either ill-informed or dishonest author of the post.

1. "The screenshot from a March 2025 Hope Not Hate article describes a Christmas dinner I attended in London as a 'gathering of…Neo-Byzantium.' It claims I was filmed -though no footage has ever surfaced- by an infiltrator, Harry Shuckman, who allegedly used a hidden camera at the dinner, and is known to have broken the law by using an illegal fake passport to commit identity fraud.
   
   The text confusedly claims I used the term “negrophilia” in reference to America, and then also complained about the French.
   
   In reality, it was the other way around. I was talking about the well documented historical phenomenon of popular jazz music in 1920’s Paris known as “Negrophilia” and which is referred to as such by the far left newspaper The Guardian. The text misleadingly implied that this word referred more generally to areas outside this specific, and accepted historical meaning. The use of the term, in the way I used it, is not considered racist, even by The Guardian. 
   
   
   



  The term is here used by The Guardian in the same way I used it




2. A thumbnail for my video titled “The Origin and Purpose of Blue Eyes” (Jan 2024) is posted with the intended implication that I consider blue eyes a mark of superiority or to be somehow preferable to other eye colours. In reality this video merely elaborated on the recent findings of a preprint published by biorxiv, by Cain, Yamaguchi 2024, entitled ‘Effect of iris pigmentation of blue and brown eyed individuals with European ancestry on ability to see in low light conditions after a short-term dark adaption period’. The video was not racist and also presents the preprint critically - suggesting that this is a possible explanation for the phenotype in some periods of history. 
   
   
3. A thumbnail for my video titled “Hyperborean Odyssey 01: Norway” (Aug 2024) is posted with the intended implication that this video about Norwegian Viking age history, filmed while I was working aboard a cruise ship as an historian guest speaker, was somehow racist. There is nothing about race in the video, which merely presents uncontroversial facts about Norway's early medieval past. The title "Hyperborea" comes from an Ancient Greek word meaning "furthest north", widely agreed to refer to Scandinavia, and is not inherently racist.
   
   
4. A screenshot of a “tweet” posted to X on 11th Oct 2025 is intended to imply an anti-Semitic opinion. This tweet highlights how consumer genomics companies may prioritise ethnic categories based on their leadership or market focus. For instance, a British-owned firm often identifies 'English' ancestry distinctly, while dividing Ashkenazi Jews into other categories, while an American firm with a Jewish CEO emphasises 'Ashkenazi Jewish' ancestry as a single discrete category, while regularly assigning English ancestry to neighbouring regions. This observation critiques data presentation, not any group, and interpreting it as anti-Semitic would illogically imply it's also anti-English. 
   
   

While I cannot be certain of the extent to which these misrepresentations were made out of a deliberate will to mislead and distort reality, rather than out of innocent ignorance, I feel it is necessary to state the true position here. I remain open to constructive dialogue on these topics and hope this invitation can be reconsidered based on evidence rather than assumptions.