When I was much younger I was seeing a young lady who was doing an Arts degree. Her parents were divorced and her father was a French academic based in Sorbonne. Her mother was based in Sydney, Australia. She used to spend half the year in France with her father and the other half in Australia with her mother. that is where I met her.
As part of her degree, she was studying let us call say, Critical Theory as the name of the actual theory identifies people. The father of this theory was a Professor let us call him Smith (not his real name). Her lecturer kept going on and on about what Smith was saying. The trouble was, Smith’s work was published in French only and although she was a native speaker, her lecturer was not.
The lecturer relied heavily on an English translation of the work (which my friend did not use as she knew Professor Smith through her father and understood the theory from both of them) and because she was a native speaker of French. The material is rather heavy and the person who translated the material clearly did not understand it. They got several basic points wrong when the main article translated into English describing the theory.
One day she got sick of being taught the wrong material so she got out her mobile. She finally put her hand up and told the lecturer he was completely wrong. The lecturer was angry and asked her on whose authority did she base this?
She handed over her phone to the lecturer. The lecturer asked who it was, they identified themselves as Professor Smith from Sorbonne. The phone was on speaker and confirmed that the lecturer had the theory all wrong. This was very embarrassing for the class.
Professor Smith was a good friend of her father and she read many of his papers before they were published and discussed them with both the professor and her father so knew the work very well.
She had tried telling her professor who was lecturing on the material that the translation was incorrect but no Professor would take note of a second year student.
Quickly another one. A certain prominent Australian poet was visiting a large old Australian University as he was going to leave them a bequest. He got there early and the Dean was not available but as parking was so bad in the area, the Dean’s secretary suggested he sit in on a lecture on his poetry.
The lecturer started talking about the symbolism in the poem. He interrupted late in the lecture telling everyone what the different symbols really meant. The lecturer told him that he clearly did not understand the poems.
The Dean then walked in and introduced the poet to the class. The Dean missed the whole argument. The poet was a bit of a recluse and was rarely photographed after he made 50, hence nobody recognized him. He was well known for his work but most of his photos were taken when he was much younger. This did not help either.
Besides, who would imagine a poet walking into a lecture on their own work! Apparently something similar happened with a prominent US author and he or she was not recognized a few years ago. Thought was a middle aged student by most of the class.