Ousmane Kane, a scholar of Islamic studies and comparative and Islamic politics, joined Harvard Divinity School in July 2012 as the first Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Professor of Contemporary Islamic Religion and Society at HDS. Since 2002, he was an associate professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

He is a member of a number of professional organizations, including the African Studies Association of North America and the Council for the Development of Social and Economic Research in Africa. Kane studies the history of Islamic religious institutions and organizations since the eighteenth century, and he is engaged in documenting the intellectual history of Islam in Africa.

Kane has also focused on the phenomenon of Muslim globalization. His book Homeland Is the Arena: Religion, Transnationalism and the Integration of Senegalese Immigrants in America (Oxford University Press, 2010) looks at the community of Senegalese immigrants to the United States in New York and the importance these immigrants assign to their religious communities for the organization of their lives.

His other books include Muslim Modernity in Postcolonial Nigeria (Brill, 2003) and Beyond Timbuktu. An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (Cambride MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). He has published articles in the Harvard International Review, Politique étrangère, Afrique contemporaine,African Journal of International Affairs, Cahiers d’Etudes Africaines, and Islam et Sociétés au Sud du Sahara.