“No nonprofit could exist today without fund-raisers,” Naomi Levine said, raising her voice and leaning forward. Her fist pounded the table for each example she offered: “No professor would have a chair, no laboratories would be built, no dormitories would exist.”

For Ms. Levine, fund-raising is a discipline that deserves the same educational formality – and respect -as law or business. After a 22-year career as New York University’s chief fund-raiser, she is on a crusade to bring fund-raising into the academy.

“NYU didn’t raise $2.5 billion by accident; there was a process, a method, an attitude, and an approach, and we can teach that,” she said.

As executive director of the Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies, Ms. Levine oversees instruction of about 1,000 students annually in courses on “The Psychology of Philanthropy,” “Technology for Fundraising,” and “Board Development and Training.”

The student body consists of young people in search of a career, professional fund-raisers, and refugees from corporate America in search of meaningful second careers. About 35 students a year complete the requirements for a certificate, but Ms. Levine wants the school to offer something better.

She is now meeting with deans at various schools of the university to develop a masters of science degree program – two-thirds of the students taking classes last semester said they would be interested in such a degree. She’d like the degree to include courses at the law school, on the law of taxation, and the business school, on the management of nonprofits. Ms. Levine hopes the program will start next fall – pending approval at NYU and at the state level.

Ms. Levine is also pushing for Albany to require professional fund-raisers in New York State to take a course on board governance and the laws and ethics of fund-raising. Ms. Levine admitted ethics were seldom discussed during her tenure as a professional fund-raiser. However, in light of recent lapses in the ethics of both corporations and nonprofits, it is a subject that must be addressed. “If your donors start to doubt you, let me tell you, you’re in for trouble,” she said.

Ms. Levine would also like to see board members take such a course – the one at the Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising is taught by the former chief of the Charities Bureau, William Josephson, and Assistant District Attorney Karin Goldman.

“I don’t know if board members understand their responsibility. I don’t know if they ever read their audit reports. I don’t know if they know what the salaries are of the chief executives,” Ms. Levine said.

Ms. Levine says the credit for NYU’s successful fund-raising campaigns belongs to its board of trustees. She herself is the chairwoman of two boards at New York University, that of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life and the Center for Israel Studies – “the loves of my life,” she said. She also found the funding for the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

Tonight, Ms. Levine will be presiding at the inaugural lecture and dinner of the Center for Israel Studies. The center’s director, Ronald Zweig, will speak on “Scholarship and Politics: Rules of Engagement in Israel Studies.”

She said the rising tide of anti-Semitism on college campuses is “an area of great concern to me. Not only are Jewish students silent and sometimes confused, what bothers me worse is the attitude of faculty, Jewish faculty, who are equally silent in the face of this.”

To educate faculty members, this summer the Center for Israel Studies will send 12 New York University faculty members to Israel. “We’re going to try to do a Birthright for faculty, like they do for students,” referring to the Birthright Israel program, which offers free trips to Israel for American Jews between the ages of 19 and 26. “Maybe if they meet their counterparts at the Technion, their attitudes will be different. If it works here, it may be a prototype for other universities.”

Ms. Levine’s interest in Jewish history and the history of Israel developed while she was a lawyer at American Jewish Congress – she went there five years out of Columbia’s law school and eventually became executive director. She left for NYU at the age of 55.

“I joined the AJC because I was interested in the 1st and 14th amendments and at the time it was a leading organization working on integration. I didn’t go there because of any great Jewish interest. But after spending 25 years there, my interest in Jewish issues became very strong.” Her mentor was Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg.

A sign of her expansive mind and willingness to take on new challenges is the novel she has just published, “For Her Days, Not Her Nights.” It details the love triangle between Edwin Montagu, Prime Minister Herbert Asquith, and Venetia Stanley. “Writing a novel was very very hard for me. I couldn’t figure out how to do it,” Ms. Levine said.

But Ms. Levine persevered and even took on the printing and distribution of the book herself.

The novel builds on a biography she published in 1991, “Politics, Religion & Love” (New York University). She spent 10 years researching and writing the book, which is about Montagu, a Jewish member of the cabinets of Asquith and Lloyd George who became the secretary of state for India and led the opposition against the Balfour Declaration.

Ms. Levine’s curious and confident mind is a role model for any fund-raiser: “To be an effective fund-raiser, you need to be a well-rounded human being who can talk about a lot of things.”

One also has to be prepared to engage and relate to people of all different backgrounds. Ms. Levine has taken that task quite personally. Since her husband of 53 years died a few years ago, she has taken roommates.

Her first roommate was Muslim.

“There was a great difference in our age, in our lifestyle. She brought a lot of joy and excitement and boys into my house. I learned a lot about single women in New York City that I ever knew before. She came into the house having broken up with a boy she loved for three years; and I had just lost a husband; we were both at a very tender moment in our lives and we were helpful to each other.”

“But the Palestine and Israel issue was a difficult one. While I pride myself in being tolerant, on that issue I’m not tolerant. There were more and more arguments that cast a cloud over a very meaningful relationship.”

Ms. Levine’s current roommate is young woman from South Korea. “That’s also fascinating to me, to see the different culture and attitudes toward everything. It’s the difference between day and night.”

“I may appear to be a very independent woman, but I can’t sleep alone. Somebody has to be in the house,” she said.

At 81, she shows no signs of slowing down. “Still at night, when I can’t sleep, I think of my age. It’s very disturbing. Other people come to peace with getting older easier than I do.”