Appeal by former faculty member from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, Gary L. Sharpe, Judge, dismissing (A) claims against the university principally for violation of his right to due process, and for gender and national-origin discrimination in violation of, respectively, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; and (B) claims that documents issued by the United States Department of Education violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Spending Clause of the Constitution and caused or contributed to the university’s acts of discrimination. The district court granted the university’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and/or summary judgment on the grounds that the university is not a state actor, that Title IX does not authorize a private right of action for discrimination in employment, and that the complaint failed to state a claim for national-origin discrimination under Title VI. The court granted the United States defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims against them for lack of standing. We find merit only in plaintiff’s contention that Title IX allows a private right of action for a university’s intentional gender-based discrimination against a faculty member, sufficiently alleged herein. We thus vacate the judgment in part, and remand for further proceedings. Affirmed in part; vacated and remanded in part. Judge Cabranes concurs in the judgment and opinion of the Court, and files a separate opinion. AMALYA KEARSE, C.J. Plaintiff Mukund Vengalattore, a former Assistant Professor at defendant Cornell University (“Cornell” or the “University”), appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York, Gary L. Sharpe, Judge, dismissing his amended complaint (“Complaint”) alleging principally (A) that in disciplining him in response to his student assistant’s allegation that he had an inappropriate relationship with her, Cornell discriminated against him on the basis of gender and national origin in violation of, respectively, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, 20 U.S.C. §1681 et seq. (“Title IX”), and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. §2000d et seq. (“Title VI”); and (B) that defendants United States Department of Education and its Secretary (the “federal defendants”) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”), 5 U.S.C. §551 et seq., and the Spending Clause of the Constitution in issuing guidance documents that caused or contributed to Cornell’s gender discrimination. The district court granted Cornell’s motion for judgment on the pleadings and/or summary judgment, ruling principally that Title IX does not authorize a private right of action for discrimination in employment, and that the Complaint lacked sufficient allegations of national origin discrimination to state a claim under Title VI. The court granted the federal defendants’ motion to dismiss the claims against them for lack of standing. The court also dismissed a claim by Vengalattore against Cornell under 42 U.S.C. §1983 for denial of due process, ruling that Cornell is not a state actor; and it declined to exercise pendent jurisdiction over a state-law claim against Cornell for defamation. Vengalattore challenges these rulings on appeal. For the reasons that follow, we conclude that Title IX affords a private right of action for a university’s intentional gender-based discrimination against a faculty member, and that the Complaint sufficiently asserts such a claim; we thus vacate and remand for further proceedings on Vengalattore’s Title IX claim. We therefore also vacate the discretionary dismissal of his state-law claim for defamation. We affirm the dismissal of the Title VI and due process claims against Cornell, as well as the dismissal of the claims against the federal defendants. I. BACKGROUND Cornell’s motion to dismiss requested judgment on the pleadings “and/or” summary judgment, and the district court stated that the motion was granted. Given that the court “did not purport to…make factual findings,” and assessed the Complaint’s allegations, rather than any proffered evidence, “all of the facts alleged in [plaintiff's] complaint[] must be taken as true for purposes of review,” Cannon v. University of Chicago, 441 U.S. 677, 680 n.2 (1979). We also “consider…documents incorporated into the complaint by reference.” Tellabs, Inc. v. Makor Issues & Rights, Ltd., 551 U.S. 308, 322 (2007) (“Tellabs”). The principal factual allegations of the 846-paragraph Complaint, taken as true, are summarized below. A. An Overview of the Complaint’s Allegations as to the Events Vengalattore is a male of Indian descent. He became a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Physics in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences in 2009. In that position, with the aid of assistants, he designed and conducted laboratory experiments. One assistant, a graduate student — called “Jane Roe” in this litigation — worked on a Vengalattore experiment from 2009 until late 2012. She, inter alia, struggled with her lab assignments and often took professional criticism personally; was somewhat unprofessional in her language and conduct; falsely accused others of breaking lab equipment; and objected to “work[ing] long hours” as she stated would be expected of “Indians.” (See Complaint
203, 211, 253-257, 260, 396, 407.) Roe withdrew from Vengalattore’s project in November 2012. In the Spring of 2013, she told a professor who collaborated in Vengalattore’s research “if I have my way, [Dr. Vengalattore] will have a hard time getting tenure.” (Id. 292.) In May 2014, during the Physics Department’s consideration of Vengalattore’s request for tenure, Roe sent the tenure review committee a letter alleging that Vengalattore had once angrily thrown a five-pound piece of equipment at her. In September 2014, two days after learning that the committee had recommended that tenure be granted, Roe told Physics Professor Ritchie Patterson that Vengalattore had engaged in sexual misconduct with her. That accusation was relayed to Alan Mittman, Director of Cornell’s Office of Workforce Policy and Labor Relations. Dean Gretchen Ritter, responsible for approval of tenure decisions in the College of Arts and Sciences, was informed of Roe’s accusation while she was considering Vengalattore’s tenure request. Mittman proceeded to conduct numerous informal interviews of Roe, keeping the Dean informed of Roe’s allegations; Vengalattore was not similarly informed. (See, e.g., id.
