Since the Hamas attack on Israel in early October, the war has created stark divisions on college campuses nationwide. Our Antonia Hilton returned to one school for a candid conversation with student activists on both sides of the issue.

The campus of Cornell may look the same as always, but it feels different here. Students are on edge and have been since the war began, and a student was arrested for making violent anti Semitic threats.

How would you describe the climate right now?

We're getting threats on campus, so it's.

Like, how can you mourn? I'm numb. I feel like I'm desensitized.

We asked students from the Jewish organization Hillel and Students for justice in Palestine to meet together. Both declined.

I don't think it's the right time.

If you have family and friends in the region, it's not an intellectual exercise to debate and discuss Jewish students.

Zoe and Simone are the descendants of Holocaust and Pogrim survivors.

My cousin is a paratrooper in the Israeli Defense Forces. He's 20 years old, and within the first day of the war, 20 of his friends were killed or taken hostage.

Malach is Palestinian and has family in Gaza. She says her grandparents were forced out of their homes in 1948.

Like, I grew up hearing the stories of what Israeli militia did to them.

At one point, the tension was so high at Cornell, classes were canceled, and the Department of Education is now investigating alleged harassment complaints at Cornell and other schools.

I've noticed a lot more stairs, a lot more unease just around me being around.

It's just been really, really challenging for people on this campus. When I'm seeing my peers march down the streets chanting things like, from the river to the sea, which we've seen as really a call for genocide or an ethnic cleansing of Jewish people.

Many Jewish students see that slogan, from the river to the sea as a call for violence. Many Muslim students say it's a call for equal rights.

The thing says, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. So question is, where is it? From the river to the sea, palestinians shouldn't feel safe. That's a better question. I think we should entertain. Let's look at the map and say, I want Palestinians to be free. I want Jewish folk to be free. Everywhere. From the river to the sea. That's what it means.

My problem is with that slogan in specific, not whatever message anyone thinks they're sharing with it. Because Hamas has used it.

It's been appropriated by a terrorist organization.

Cornell has increased security and promised new programs to fight anti Semitism and tells NBC News they condemn all forms of discriminatory bias.

Our coalition, our individual organizations all came together and condemned anti Semitism.

What would it take to maybe just slightly open the door to either healthier dialog or more dialog here on campus?

For no one on this campus to use the slogan from the river to the sea Palestine will be free again. I think it's just too painful for.

Jewish students to hear until I can be seen as a human and until my humanity of being a Muslim, of being a Palestinian is seen first, then it's hard to have a conversation.

For now, neither side believes the other can see their humanity. Antonia Hilton, NBC News, Ithaca, New York.

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