If an author actually being X has no consequences apart from the professor believing that the author is "X", all consequences accrue to quoted beliefs and we have no reason to believe the unquoted form is meaningful or important.

No consequences meaning no consequences, or no consequences meaning no empirical testability? Consider replacing the vague and subjective predicate "Post Utopian" with the even more subjective "good". If a book is (believed to be) good or bad, that clearly has consequences, such as ones willingness to read it.

There are two consistent courses here: you can expand the notion of truth to include judgements of value and quality backed by handwavy on-empirical arguments; or you can keep a narrow, positivist notion of truth and abandon the use of handwaviness yourself. And you are not doing the latter because your arguments for MWI (to take just one example) are non-empirical handwaviness.