In 2000-2001, Daum was a fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. In the summer of 2001, Daum wrote an article for the "Harvard International Review" entitled “"Universalism and the West — An Agenda for Understanding”", in which he criticised the US government for destroying the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Khartoum during the 1998 bombing campaign, codenamed Operation Infinite Reach. Having worked in Sudan as ambassador of Germany during the time of the attack, he wrote that there was no evidence that the factory had produced precursors to chemical weapons and that Ghazi Sulayman, an internationally respected Sudanese human rights advocate, was a credible witness to this. Furthermore, Daum claimed that the attack caused a serious shortage in medication and that a "reasonable guess" for the deaths of civilians in Sudan caused by this shortage was in the "tens of thousands".