Officially, he was an authority on nonprofit foundations. Unofficially, he was an unparalleled networker among the nation’s rich and powerful.

He spent more than half a century at Duke University, where he was the founding director of its school of public policy.

Though he is best known for founding Duke’s public policy program, Fleishman’s former colleague described him as a “multifaceted diamond.”

Fleishman was the founding director of the Sanford School, appointed by President Terry Sanford to lead the initiative then known as the Institute for Policy Sciences and Public Affairs, and is remembered for his contribution to the Jewish community at Duke.