A college grant program for white males that is now taking applications is being blasted as fanning white nationalism.

Breitbart News senior editor Milo Yiannopoulos announced the Yiannopoulos Privilege Grant in July. The program, which is funded by the right-wing provocateur and private donors, began taking applications on Tuesday, Breitbart reports.



"No this isn't a joke," he said.

Yiannopoulos has received condemnation by critics in the past. In July, he was banned from Twitter for tweeting abusive comments toward specific users, including African-American comedian Leslie Jones.

Asked about the scholarship program, UC Berkeley law professor Ian Haney Lopez said Wednesday that affirmative action programs were undertaken "to welcome historically excluded and dehumanized groups into every school, neighborhood and workplace."

"Affirmative action for white men is not social repair. Affirmative action for white men is a stunt to mock the moral and social importance of integration and to increase social strife," he told CNBC.



Princeton University professor Eddie Glaude Jr. said the program was part of "a white nationalist agenda clearly and unapologetically."



"We should all be deeply troubled by the connection between Steve Bannon in the White House and Milo Yiannopoulos at Breitbart," Glaude told CNBC by telephone. Bannon, a top advisor to President Donald Trump, was the executive chairman of Breitbart News. He joined the Trump campaign a month after the grant program was announced.

"The so-called 'Privilege Grant' promoted by Milo Yiannopoulos is part of a larger pattern by provocateurs and outright haters to create division and sow controversy on campus by asserting that whites are underprivileged due to the gains made by women, minorities and the LGBTQ community," Oren Segal, Director of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism told CNBC. "Yiannopoulos and others apparently feel emboldened by the current political climate to promote white identity politics at colleges across the country. In addition to the grant for whites only, we are seeing a rash of fliers promoting white identity and heritage at campuses across the country."

Yiannopoulos, Breitbart and the White House did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment.

