In recent years, no issue has been more contentious on college campuses than the conflict in the Middle East.

Since the 1960s, the American university has often been less a free marketplace of ideas than a combat zone where partisan groups forcefully and sometimes fiercely argue their positions on national and world affairs. In recent years, no issue has been more contentious than the conflict in the Middle East. "Campus Battleground," a special in the AMERICA AT A CROSSROADS series, focuses on the University of California-Berkeley and Columbia University in New York, where pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students struggle over the competing claims of Zionism and Palestinian nationalism, over what history teaches and whether absolute demands can ever lead to honorable compromise. The seemingly intractable conflict half a world away has forced these students to think about allegiances to family, ethnicity and religion and, above all, about the need to take a stand that will define them and their ideals.