The official has known Huang since the "tangwai" era, when democracy activists came together in the 1980s to fight against the KMT administration prior to the DPP's founding.
Huang is also a psychologist and was a professor at National Taiwan University for 17 years until May 2000, when the DPP came to power.
A liberal scholar and social reformist, Huang was one of the few professors who were sympathetic to the "tangwai" dissidents and participated in battles against the KMT for more than two decades.
In the late 1980s when Taiwan was under martial law, Huang and his colleagues formed a reform group called the "professors alliance" on campus. In addition, he was one of the few professors to stand behind the student movement that rocked the nation in the early 1990s.
Huang was also the co-founder of the Taipei Society, a pressure group founded in 1989 by university professors and scholars from the Academia Sinica. He was once the head of the society.
Besides his deep involvement in educational reform, Huang was the former director of the humanities and social sciences division under the National Science Council and a former minister without portfolio in charge of 921 reconstruction projects in central Taiwan.
It is widely believed that Huang's close ties with the DPP and his pro-Taiwan ideology is why he got the job as education minister. The DPP administration believes the education minister's duty isn't limited to reform of school system -- such as the abolishment of the Joint College Entrance Examination. "What's even more vital is the shift from the Chinese-oriented education to one focused on Taiwan," according to Huang.
Huang's aides in the ministry praise him as efficient and easy to work with, but political commentators cautioned that Huang's casual manners, if not modified, will cause him unnecessary trouble.
Huang called an audience "stupid" while attending a call-in radio program to answer questions regarding the Pinyin controversy, a few days after the decision was made.
Without understanding the focal point of the arguments, the audience asked "how the minister could agree to use the Pinyin system to teach English."
"I decline to reply such a stupid question," Huang answered, quickly drawing fire.
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