For what it's worth, here is an excerpt for the entry on Rand that I wrote for The New Encyclopedia of Unbelief, ed Tom Flynn, Prometheus Books:

Humanism. Rand held that religion is a primitive effort to serve a genuine human need for a comprehensive worldview and moral code, but that it is based on an irrational belief in the supernatural. Similarly, she held that religious notions of reverence and worship reflect the idealism of moral aspiration but are misdirected toward the suprahuman. "It is this highest level of man's emotions," she wrote, "that has to be redeemed from the murk of mysticism and redirected at its proper object: man. ... The man-worshipers, in my sense of the term' are those who see man's highest potential and strive to actualize it."

ln this respect, Rand was clearly a humanist. Like other humanists. she believed that morality must be based on human nature rather than divine commands. She admired classical civilization as well as the modem Enlightenment, and regarded the medieval era as a dark interlude. She did not describe herself as a humanist, however, believing that the term was too general to be useful in describing a philosophical standpoint. She would have rejected many of the points in such humanist manifestos as the Council for Secular Humanism s "Affirmations of Humanism." Instead, she coined the term Objectivism as the name of her philosophy.

Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism, empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanism

Humanism is a progressive lifestance that, without supernaturalism, affirms our ability and responsibility to lead meaningful, ethical lives capable of adding to the greater good of humanity.
American Humanist Association - http://americanhumanist.org/humanism/...

Overall, based on the definition, I'd have to say very similar but no. "Greater good" & "Collectively" are kryptonite buzz words to Objectivism.

But, I'm a Conservative, I could be wrong.

I have an answer to this on the Atlas Society website. Basically, I say in a general sense Rand was a humanist, but as AJAshinoff notes, note in the sense of agreeing with all the tenets that most humanists embrace. http://atlassociety.org/objectivism/a...

No, she was an Objectivist.

Objectivism is a subcategory of the Humanist philosophy. So like all thumbs are fingers, not all fingers are thumbs; Objectivists are Humanists, but not all Humanists are Objectivists.

What do you mean? I think she described ade-
quately what she was: an Objectivist. True, some
people like to use the term "secular humanist", often as a pejorative, as distinguished from a re-
ligionist. She believed in the material world, the
world knowable to reason, so, in that respect,
I would say she was a "humanist"--or at least,
secular. But she did not say that man can change the nature of reality, or that the laws of
nature will change because he says so.

I would argue that if Reason must be man's only absolute, and I agree that it must, then all rational questions are valid, all answers tentative. That is because all knowledge is contextual.

If the above is true, then the answer to the so-called "open vs closed" question becomes logically obvious, does it not?

Strictly speaking, not a Humanist, but Objectivism embraces much of the Humanist philosophy.They overlap to a surprising degree.My son's funeral was conducted by a female secular humanist rabbi. When the funeral overflowed the small chapel, it was moved to a bigger venue with many confused people, some of whom wondered if they were committing a sin.