Harvard to Reopen Queen’s Head as Event Venue, Hire Non-Union Employees

Harvard College will reopen the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub as an event space this fall and hire six non-union employees, following the College’s controversial decision to close the establishment in May.

Paul Curran, Harvard’s managing director of labor relations and employee relations, announced the reopening in an email to Harvard Undergraduate Workers Union-United Auto Workers, which represented the 45 workers previously employed by the pub.

“The QHP is reopening this fall as the Queen’s Head venue and will be overseen by the College’s Dean of Students Office,” Curran wrote in the email, which was circulated in a group chat of former Queen’s Head employees. “The DSO is planning to hire six ‘Event Assistants’ to work events in the Queen’s Head and other venues.”

“After evaluation, we have determined that these newly created positions are not part of the bargaining unit,” Curran added.

HUWU-UAW slammed the reopening as “union busting” in a post on Instagram Saturday, adding that the move “reflects a staggering contempt” for unionized workers on campus.

“The Dean of Students Office has reimagined the Cambridge Queen’s Head space into a more inclusive and welcoming environment focused on providing opportunities for all students, and particularly first-year students, to come together to learn, to talk, and to relax,” Harvard spokesperson Jonathan Palumbo wrote in a statement.

“There will no longer be food or beverage service so the positions that support the space have been aligned to the needs,” Palumbo added. “We look forward to a semester filled with community building.”

In May, the DSO and Harvard University Dining Services announced that the pub, located beneath Annenberg Hall, would close after 17 years.

The decision met widespread backlash on campus and dealt a significant blow to HUWU-UAW, which had a bargaining unit that included a large proportion of Queen’s Head workers.

Bea Wall-Feng, a member of HUWU-UAW’s bargaining committee and a former Crimson Magazine editor, said the DSO’s decision to suddenly reopen the space was “shady” and “disrespectful.”

“Closing the Queen's Head, firing 45 student workers and then reopening it but only hiring six workers, not hiring the impacted workers back, and moving the workplace out of the union is a textbook example of union busting,” she said.

The move comes amid negotiations between HUWU-UAW and the University for the young group’s first contract. According to Wall-Feng, organizers discussed the closure of the Queen’s Head during summer bargaining sessions.

“Harvard, like I said, did not notify the workers who were laid off that they were going to be laid off beforehand,” Wall-Feng said. “When we met with them over the summer, it became very clear that they also didn’t really have a handle on a lot of details of how things had operated.”

Some former employees echoed complaints about a lack of communication from College administrators.

“Students aren’t being communicated with,” said former Queen’s Head employee Jack G. Towers ’25. “We find out about these things either after the decisions have been made or sort of indirectly through alternative routes.”

“I sent emails to many of the people involved in the decision, and they’ve just not replied to me,” said former employee Alice R. Ferguson ’25. “We’re not getting consulted about jobs, employment that matters to how we budget our semester, to how we fund our college.”

She added that the DSO’s decision to hire non-union personnel seemed to sidestep their May guarantee that former pub staff would have the first right of refusal for shifts at other Harvard-operated pubs and cafes.

But she said the biggest loss was the sense of community provided by the pub.

“The Queen’s Head Pub was unlike any other job I’ve ever experienced,” Ferguson said. “It really helped to bridge that community that sometimes Harvard is missing.”

“This space was so, so amazing that it feels like such a waste that it’s not being used to its potential,” she added.

—Staff writer Samuel A. Church can be reached at samuel.church@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @samuelachurch

—Staff writer Aran Sonnad-Joshi can be reached at aran.sonnad-joshi@thecrimson.com. Follow him on X @asonnadjoshi.