Meet the New AHA Staff Member: Court Beyer
Please welcome the AHA’s new Communications Director, Court Beyer!
What is your educational and work background?
I come to AHA by way of Democratic politics and the progressive advocacy space. I cut my teeth doing campaign work in Wisconsin where I was born, raised, and spent the first twenty-five years of my life. I attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison with hopes of ditching the midwest and becoming a screenwriter, but discovered along the way that I needed my professional efforts to be in service of a common good. (Trump getting elected a month before I graduated hammered home this conclusion.) Eventually I found myself leading communications for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin through the 2018 and 2020 electoral cycles, kicking out union-buster and Koch-sycophant Scott Walker in 2018, and flipping Wisconsin after it helped deliver the election to Trump in 2016.
After swearing off campaign work, I tried out consulting for a few years, doing media and PR strategy for a number of national outfits, but I couldn’t shake the bad taste the 2024 election left in my mouth. Democrats’ rightward lurch on immigration, their sanctioning of the destruction and ethnic cleansing of Gaza, and their refusal to meet right-wing attacks on trans people with a compassionate, affirmative message left me feeling like a stranger in the party. When I saw AHA was hiring, I knew this was the professional home I had been looking for – a place to make a career out of humanity.
How did you first learn about humanism?
I probably first learned about humanist thought (or at least its American precursor) in an American literature class I took in college. We spent a lot of time on the Enlightenment period, particularly Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography where Franklin recounts his journey from his Puritan upbringing to identifying as a “deist.” Franklin would go on to do many things we would not consider humanist (like proposing that the 1787 Constitutional Convention begin with a prayer), but deism provided a home for 18th and 19th-century thinkers who were at least open to the idea of criticizing Christian doctrine.
I didn’t realize there was a word to describe the values I held until much later. By the time I learned about humanism, I was used to defending my beliefs against attacks from the right, but humanism brought a proactive vision that was lacking from my politics; it’s easy enough to be against something, but what did I stand for? Humanism gave me the words and affirmation to say what I always believed: people are inherently good, whole, and worthy.
Did you grow up in a traditional religious faith? How did it impact you?
Not technically. While my mom and dad grew up Catholic and Lutheran respectively, my parents let me draw my own conclusions on faith and religion. They felt some pressure when I was young to raise my brother and me with the same traditions their parents had, so I remember going to a church service once in a while and even attended Vacation Bible Camp one summer (lots of Veggietales). I am even baptized Lutheran! Which can’t hurt…right?
While I never felt pressure from my family to conform, the reality was I lived in a very conservative, religious part of the country, and at the same time that I was coming into my own beliefs and identity as a teen, I was realizing that many of my friends at the time did not affirm my humanity. So I found queer community that did! Shouts to my high school’s theater program for providing the space to meet a bunch of other weirdos.
What interested you most about working for the American Humanist Association?
At a time when public trust in institutions is at an all-time low, people need something to believe in and fight for. I know so many people who feel lost right now, people who eight years ago were at the frontlines protesting. I genuinely think humanism has the potential to provide a home – or at the very least something to point to and say “that’s me” – for so many people. Also, we’re kind of forging uncharted waters at AHA. Running a public awareness campaign for a life philosophy is a wild undertaking, and it’s exactly the challenge I wanted to dive into.
What book has influenced you the most?
Reading has always been a lifeline for me, but I also have a horrible memory, and I find books speak to us at different times in our life for different reasons. I recently read Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, and it made me think a lot about what humanity owes our planet and natural life. A quote I keep returning to (translated from Polish): “People have a duty towards animals to lead them to liberation. We’re all traveling in the same direction, from dependence to freedom.”
If you could have dinner with any three people in the world (living or dead), who would they be and why?
1) My Uncle Mark, who passed away three years ago and was an open Atheist my entire life. We talked a lot over the years about politics, religion, and being a good person, and I’d just love to tell him all about AHA.
2) My Grandpa Rosenthal, who I never got to meet and passed unexpectedly on Christmas day a few months before I was born.
3) Assuming this is a dinner party and we’d probably need some comic relief, I’d invite Robin Williams, who I admire for managing to inspire endless joy and laughter in the face of so much personal anguish.