SIUE Professor Hospitalized After Arrest at Wash U

A Southern Illinois University Edwardsville professor was among those arrested at Washington University Saturday during a protest calling for the university to divest from Boeing amid Israel’s relentless attacks on Gaza — and his wife says he was brutally beaten.

Steve Tamari , a history professor, was recording video of the students and activists circling the makeshift encampment as police began their arrests on Saturday.

In a video posted by his wife, Sandra, Tamari is grabbed and wrestled to the ground by at least four officers. Three other officers stood in front of them as they worked to zip tie his hands to block press and protestors from recording the scene.

Sandra Tamari writes that she was also arrested.

“I was arrested at the Gaza encampment at Washington University in St. Louis on Sat. My husband, a 65-year old full professor at S Illinois Univ Edwardsville, was brutally beaten by police,” she writes in a post to X (formerly Twitter) accompanying the video.

In a reply to the video, Sandra Tamari adds, “When the police moved into the encampment, there were young children present. In some of the videos of the arrests, I can hear the voice of the 10-yr old daughter of a friend yelling, ‘Don't hurt him! Leave him alone!’”

At a press conference in Forest Park called by the activist group Resist Wash U on Tuesday, Nawal Abuhamdeh, one of the activists who was at the encampment on Saturday, read a statement by Steve Tamari, who she said was unable to attend in person because he remains hospitalized.

“Over the last seven months. I've been in agony watching my people in Palestine be slaughtered with U.S. bombs and funding. I joined the student led protests on Saturday to stop the genocide and support and protect the students,” Tamari’s statement said.

Tamari said he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County Police officers and then dragged across campus by the police. As a result of police brutality, I am now in the hospital with multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.”

One doctor told Tamari he is lucky to be alive, he said: “My lungs could have been punctured and I could have died on the ground as they abused me.”

Tamari added that Wash U rejected invitations from students to engage in dialogue about divestment from Israel and Boeing.

“Washington University administrators called in the police armed with batons and wielding bicycles like battering rams,” he wrote. “Police forces from around the metro area crushed a gathering of students and concerned citizens pressing for an end to American complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza.”

“Everything that occurred on Saturday is documented and clear for those who wish to see,” Sandra Tamari wrote on X. “[Wash U] used violence against its own students, faculty, staff and the community to maintain its complicity in genocide. We are undeterred and St Louis will continue to rise up for Palestine.”

A total of 100 people were arrested on campus Saturday, including 23 Wash U students and at least four employees, according to Chancellor Andrew Martin. The students and staff have now been temporarily barred from campus at a critical point in the semester.

Six faculty members have been barred from campus and placed on leave, including Aldermanic President Megan Green who attempted to de-escalate the situation with university administration.

Another protest is scheduled for Saint Louis University’s campus at 6 p.m. on Wednesday.

Aldermanic President Megan Green also posted on X a video of Tamari's arrest: