Santa Cruz was an epitome of the lavish optimism and creativity of the times and attracted international attention. Ray found it permanently liberating. He played major roles in Santa Cruzs attempt to build an academic utopia among the redwoods, emulating the best of Oxbridge, creating a college system which sought out talent and held it to high standards, and emphasising inter-disciplinary studies.

But Santa Cruz soon encountered the darker side of the 60s escalating frenzy and violence from both left and right. With Ronald Reagan as new governor of California, suppressing academic meetings and civil liberties, and Richard Nixon as new president of the US, threatening worse oppression, America lost its charm, and Ray undertook a new adventure in the department of politics of the young Monash University, in Australia, the home of his exceedingly homesick then wife.

Professor Nichols.

The move failed to save his marriage, but as Ray put it, he fell in love with Oz, and became an Australian citizen.

Experiencing Monashs enormous expansion, he defended the pre-eminence of undergraduate education, faced down efforts to impose behaviourism and to dilute standards, and championed new academic enterprises and greater academic self-government.

In addition to running the department, he directed its honours program throughout his years at Monash, was much involved in faculty governance, was vice-president of the academic union and ran the universitys first general strike, broadcast frequently on the ABC and Radio Singapore, served as a consultant to various government operations, and led community action groups in Carlton and the eastern suburbs, blocking inappropriate development and becoming increasingly involved in green causes.

He was a celebrated lecturer, but most relished the spontaneous cut and thrust of seminars. His greatest joy was seeing his students become independent. He was distinguished by his scholarly works on political action, ideology, and language, with frequent reference to France and America.

He negotiated early retirement from Monash when he couldnt stop staff cuts and forced mergers of departments.

Ray was both an idealist and an ironist. He was a committed secular humanist and democrat but declined to embrace any grand ideology. He opposed instrumentalism (domination by means/end efficiency) and post-modernism (logocentric relativism), as threats to political progress and intellectual rigour.

He was dismayed by the rise of right-wing irrationality in America and infuriated by intellectual laziness and parochialism everywhere. He was convinced that political calamities were largely because most people dont think much about most things.

He believed passionately in education, participation, and intellectual leadership and that the parlous nature of organised intellectual life made its defence all the more essential. His numerous long-time friends, many of them former students, are some tribute to those beliefs.

Ray was a member of Melbournes Boobooks and of Trinitys William Pitt Society and a life member of the Oxford Union.

He is survived by his beloved wife his partner of three decades the painter and illustrator Francisca (Sisca) Verwoert.

Paul Verwoert was Ray Nichol's student at Monash University, studying politics.

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He fell in love with Oz - The Age