Citing sources and the "Right to Publicity" (USA)
I don't think I've ever seen any such clause in an academic publishing agreement.

As an example, I and some coauthors recently published a paper in a journal run by the American Mathematical Society (a US organization).  The publishing agreement contained no such stipulation; the closest thing is a clause requiring us to certify that our paper "does not libel anyone, infringe anyone’s copyright, or otherwise violate anyone’s statutory or common law rights."

Indeed our paper mentioned the names of lots of individuals, both living and dead (though none fictional, as far as I know), in the context of citing their work.  We never asked their consent and it was never suggested that we should.  It is conceivable that this might violate the "statutory or common law rights" of those individuals, if there really are laws such as you suggest, but I've never heard a suggestion that merely mentioning people by name was likely to pose actual legal problems.

If I did see a clause like the one you mention, I'd probably do one of the following:


If I were feeling lazy, I'd just sign it even though it's not actually true, and assume that no real trouble will result.
If I were feeling conscientious, I'd tell the publisher that I can't sign the agreement as it stands because my paper does mention people by name, and it's not feasible to ask their consent.  (I could add something about this being an undue restriction on academic freedom, etc.)  If they insisted, I'd withdraw my paper and look for a publisher with more reasonable lawyers.