Partisans assail historians for judging the past by today’s standards. Here’s why they’re wrong, says classicist

Should historians judge the past based on the standards of the present? That’s the question rattling around Twitter these days, as historians fend off arguments that it’s anachronistic to bring present-day norms like “slavery is bad” and “sexism is harmful” to assessments of the past. And while there is certainly some merit to the idea that the past must be judged on its own terms, in practice, this argument both misreads history and risks discrediting a key reason history remains an important and useful discipline — namely, that it can inform questions relevant to us today.

And this isn’t just a fight about history. It’s about politics. In an era when pundits are making their reputation on “politically-incorrect” defenses of the West — and the European male power structure it was built on — these fights about history and values are an extension of the battles over who should rule and who should be ruled, and the nature of power, privilege and oppression.

Take, for instance, efforts by Jelani Cobb, a New Yorker staff writer and historian, to untangle the myths of Abraham Lincoln and emancipation, pointing out that Lincoln was slow to move on emancipation and favored the mass deportation of former slaves. He was upbraided for “moralizing the past,” and in response pointed out that “slavery is wrong” is not just a judgment of the present — the Founders knew slavery was wrong, so wrong that they sought an end to their “enslavement” by the British.

Or go back further, to ancient Athens. Last week I pointed out on Twitter that “Athens, the ‘cradle of democracy,’ built egalitarianism for its citizens on slavery, misogyny, and exclusion of foreigners.” In classical studies, this is an uncontroversial point, borne out by mountains of evidence. Then Nassim Nicholas Taleb — best-selling author most recently of “Skin in the Game” — weighed in, accusing me of “anachronistic bigoteering.”

Taleb has lately made a reputation as a sort of amateur classicist, or at least a truculent critic of professional classicists. Last year, he accused eminent scholar Mary Beard of peddling politically correct “bulls—.” ...